Lewis Hamilton is ‘resilient' and possesses the strength of character to bounce back from ‘the harder bits' of life as a
Formula 1 driver – that is the view of Britain's last world champion in the top flight,
Damon Hill.
The 1996 title-winner and British Racing Drivers' Club President has been an interested observer of Hamilton's ‘difficult second year syndrome' in 2008, as the McLaren-Mercedes star continues to struggle to replicate the kind of form that saw him come within a single point of lifting the drivers' laurels at his maiden attempt last season.
“I think he's going through the harder bits, if you like,” Hill told
Crash.net Radio. “When he entered last year, he was very much a pretender and a new boy, and now he's got expectation on his shoulders and he's finding that that's a bit of a heavier burden.
“I have complete faith in Lewis, though. He's very resilient – to have got to where he is and to have been as prepared as he was in his first season of Formula 1 I think shows that the guy has got very strong depth of character.
“Inevitably, though, it does get harder the whole time, and it's always harder than you think. Even
Michael Schumacher showed signs that the strain is enormous; I think Ross Brawn said it recently, that the pressure that these guys are under is enormous, and it's very difficult for people on the outside to really appreciate that.”
Hamilton endured two consecutive failures to score in both Montreal – where he calamitously ran into the back of chief title rival
Kimi Raikkonen under a red light in the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve's pit-lane – and Magny-Cours, when he was further punished with both a grid demotion for his Canadian indiscretion and subsequent drive-through penalty incurred for being deemed to have gained an advantage by shooting off the track immediately after passing
Scuderia Toro Rosso's
Sebastian Vettel.
