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Former Mercedes executive director, technical, Paddy Lowe talks about his impressions of Lewis Hamilton during his tenure with McLaren and Mercedes.
Paddy Lowe has had the opportunity to see Lewis Hamilton progress from a rookie to a multi-time champion during his tenure with McLaren and Mercedes. Lowe has been with McLaren from 1993 until the end of 2012, and then he moved to Mercedes in 2013 and stayed with the team until the end of 2016.
This means he was able to witness Lewis Hamilton’s career progress first hand: his debut with McLaren in 2007, his first world title in 2008, his more to Mercedes in 2013, and his second and third world titles in 2014 and 2015.
During his appearance on the Beyond the Grid podcast, Lowe talked about his impressions of Lewis since his debut.
“Well firstly he arrived in terrific shape, he hit the ground running with nine podiums in his first nine races,” Lowe said.
“I don’t believe we will ever see that again for a rookie. He was already at a very uniquely high level from the day he arrived in Formula 1. He has improved massively in all that time.”
The Briton then explained in what areas he thinks Lewis improved the most throughout the years.
“I would say in the consistent delivery. There’s nothing left on the table any day.
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“Lewis is supremely talented and one of the features of people that are supremely talented is that they generally know they are and that does sometimes leave scope for relaxation at certain points when they think ‘I am the best, I am good enough, I will make it work, I will carry it through’.”
Lowe was also alongside Hamilton in 2016, when he lost the world championship to team-mate Nico Rosberg, an experience that he believes taught Lewis an important lesson.
“Of course, it’s not always down to you, luck will play its part. Disturbance will get in the way of your talent.
“2016 was a great example of that where Lewis had an extremely bad share of the bad luck around reliability which itself was very rare but it all came onto his plate.
“That asked a lot of him which unfortunately he didn’t have enough in the end to close the championship.
“I think that’s an example where he learned you can’t leave any race on the table. You got to take them all whatever way it is looking,” concluded Lowe.
