The one piece of criticism you could never aim at Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton has joined Ferrari from Mercedes on a multi-year contract
Can you remember your first day at school? Or even more nerve-wracking if it applies, your first day at a new school?
The worry if you will like the people there, if the feeling will be reciprocated, getting to learn new names, where things are… Of course, it will be very different for Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari, where he will be welcomed with open arms and helped with his every need, but on a human level, that nervous feeling will surely apply in some form.
Lewis Hamilton takes on new, tough challenge in Charles Leclerc partnership
Hamilton has been building up to this moment for quite some time: becoming a Ferrari driver.
Fred Vasseur even said so himself, claiming he mentioned wanting to drive there as early as his Formula 3 days in 2004, and now that dream is becoming a reality, it will be straight down to business.
While English may be the lingua franca in the paddock, Hamilton has spoken of wanting to learn Italian, with the Tifosi having long looked at their drivers to put in some effort to at least learn a little bit of the language Ferrari represents.
That will soon be put to the test when he heads to Maranello for the first time in an official capacity, and driving in red in a private test in their 2022 car.
While so much has been written about this move, a point that is worth highlighting for praise is Hamilton’s continued self-belief after three largely frustrating years at Mercedes, to now go up against Ferrari’s golden boy in Charles Leclerc.
Leclerc has long been touted as the Scuderia’s next World Champion, but let us not forget the impact he had against another of the sport’s greats in Sebastian Vettel either. So much so, in fact, that he received the longest contract Ferrari had ever handed to a driver, while Vettel needed to find a new seat.
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👉 Four big reasons why Lewis Hamilton ditched Mercedes for Ferrari
When you look back, it has been an admirable quality from the outset and throughout Hamilton’s Formula 1 career that he has never shied away from testing himself against drivers at the top of the grid.
Take his time at McLaren, which started by duelling against the two-time reigning World Champion in Fernando Alonso. They finished level on points, and he could (and perhaps should) have beaten him.
After largely putting Heikki Kovalainen to the sword, along came Jenson Button – also the then-reigning World Champion.
They, too, were evenly matched over their time together, and when the time came to move to Mercedes, he partnered with a Nico Rosberg that had comfortably had the better of an, albeit past his absolute peak, Michael Schumacher over the course of three seasons.
Two World Championships to one would be the score between the two of them, and after driving well enough to force Toto Wolff into publicly declaring Valtteri Bottas his ‘wingman’, a back-to-back GP3 and F2 champion would arrive in George Russell, with the two eventually separated by only two points (in Hamilton’s favour) over the course of three full seasons.
While Hamilton has not always had it all his own way in his team-mate battles across his career, the fact he has won the majority of these duels – and signed up for arguably one of the toughest on the grid for his next step – speaks volumes for not only the belief in his own ability, but for the belief that being a Ferrari driver trumps battling against whoever is on the other side of the garage.
What this move represents is one of only two seven-time World Champions adding to one of the most historic legacies already established in Formula 1, but if he does win a record eighth title, and he does it while driving for Ferrari?
That could be the closest anybody has been to ‘completing’ Formula 1.
And having had three World Champion team-mates (to date), and now going up against a potential future champion in Leclerc, Hamilton has earned large parts of his success both against the other teams, and within his team’s own garage.
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