mobanmarketLewis Hamilton snapped back at Nico Rosberg’s claim that his former Mercedes teammate was past his natural peak as a racing driver and had been overtaken by Max Verstappen as F1’s current best.
Rosberg posted his views in a Vlog on Youtube after Verstappen had secured pole for last Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
The 2016 world champion argued, among other things, that the Dutchman’s blend of youth and experience now surpassed Hamilton’s own combination of talent and experience.
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“The best age for racing drivers is like 30, 31, 32,” rationally stated Rosberg.
“Your ability getting older slightly decreases – your speed of reaction and all that, but experience counts so much, it will outdo the small decrease in your natural ability as a human as you get a bit older.”
A touchy Hamilton predictably rebuffed the interesting comments from his former rival, but reacted to the messenger rather than to the message.
“I’ve never seen the blog, I don’t know who follows it, but it has no bearing on anything that I do,” he said after his 81st career win in Hungary.
“I don’t care, everyone has their own opinion. Whether he’s right or wrong, I don’t really care.
“All you have to do is look at my tally of results over the years, and they kind of speak for themselves.
“So naturally there will be people that have not had the success that I’ve had, and might want to talk it down, but that’s OK.”
Hamilton then referred to a book he had once read – Don Miguez Ruiz’s best-selling ‘Four Agreements’ based on ideas from the ancient Toltec wisdom of the native people of Southern Mexico.
“I read a really good book, I think it’s called the Four Agreements. There’s an element in there where it says don’t take anything personally, so when someone says something about you, it’s not actually about you, it’s how they feel about themselves.
“I’m 34 years old but I feel like I’m driving better than ever. Hopefully today you can see that I’ve not lost any speed.
“Qualifying is not always going to go great, you just have to move on. Races are not always going to go great, the last one [Germany] sucked.
“But you know what, you move straight on, let it go, there’s nothing you can do about the past, all you can do is try to shape the future.
“Honestly I couldn’t be more proud – ultimately you want to be proud of yourself, and I feel really proud of myself today, how I drove, because that’s how I always want to drive, and then how we delivered as a team.”
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Regardless of the possible dwindling of his natural ability with age, Hamilton insisted he had no plans to retire in the near future.
“One day I will have to stop,” he added. “But right now I feel fantastic physically, generally, this year, and mentally, so I currently don’t have any plans of stopping any time soon. There’s more to do, more to win.
“There’s more to achieve together inside and outside of the car, within the sport and outside of the sport.”
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