A change in approach at the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix likely turned around Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 1 career, ex-McLaren race engineer Mark Temple believes.
After bursting onto the scene in 2007 and winning the championship in 2008, the Briton’s star faded a little as McLaren struggled in 2009 and a Sebastian Vettel-led Red Bull became the team to beat in F1.
Then, having been known for his aggression during his early years on the grid, Hamilton struggled to adapt when the era of high-degradation tyres was introduced in 2011.
“Pirelli came along and that kind of changed the face of how you had to drive in the race,” Temple said on the F1 Nation podcast last year.
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“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 because 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 teammate was Jenson [Button], who was the master of going fast while driving slow, and that kind of unsettled him a little bit.”
In fact, that year saw Hamilton beaten by Button, who was the first teammate to outscore Lewis across a full season.
“But then, the point where I remember him just having that Eureka moment was in Barcelona,” Temple continued.
“So 2011 was resisting that need to drive slower to look after the tyres in a particular way but in 2012, Barcelona, [after] that fantastic pole position, we got sent to the back of the grid because of a fuelling error in qualifying.
“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.
“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.”
Nowadays, tyre management is just one of the many traits Hamilton is among the best in, as he proved last year in Turkey.
But there was another aspect to that Spanish GP, where he climbed from 24th to eighth ahead of Button, which Temple sees in Lewis now.
“In a way, that characterises Lewis – he’s at his best when he’s on the back foot,” he said.
“If he’s had a bad Friday then the teammate’s got to be worried about Saturday. If he has a bad Saturday, the teammate’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.
“But get that out of his system, get his game on and the next stage is that he comes out and smashes it.”