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Lewis Hamilton’s former McLaren engineer Mark Temple reveals there was a moment in 2012 that turned Lewis into a master of tyre management.
Temple has been McLaren’s main car performance engineer since 2003. In 2012 he recalls a moment that allowed Lewis to fully comprehend the importance of “going fast, while driving slow”.
“In 2011, Pirelli came along and that kind of changed the face of how you had to drive in the race,” Temple said.
“The idea that you had to drive slower to go fast was quite alien to Lewis. It was a difficult year for him outside of that particular thing – there was a lot going on in his life – but that was a thing that really challenged him more than anything else at that point.
“Particularly as his team mate was Jenson [Button], who was the master of going fast while driving slow. And that kind of unsettled him a little bit, but then… the point where I remember him just having that eureka moment was in Barcelona.
“So 2011 was resisting that need to drive slower to look after the tyres in a particular way but in 2012, Barcelona, that fantastic pole position, we got sent to the back of the grid because of a fuelling error in qualifying.
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“The only way to get past in Barcelona, you can’t overtake, is to outdrive everyone else using tyre management and that was like a sort of ‘switch on’ point…
“And he put his focus into it and turned it around and from that race onwards through the rest of that year and his career, he’s really understood the importance of that.
“In a way, that characterises Lewis: he’s at his best when he’s on the back foot. If he’s had a bad Friday then the team mate’s got to be worried about Saturday.
“If he has a bad Saturday then the team mate’s got to be worried about Sunday, because getting on the back foot would just- there would be a little bit of stress, frustration, venting on the radio – we’ve all heard Lewis on the radio.
“But get that out of his system, get his game on, and the next stage is that he comes out and smashes it,” concluded Temple.
