Lewis Hamilton is obviously a good driver but is he really up there with the 'greatest' ?
Hamilton drives in an era obsessed with safety and at a time when technological advances have made racing cars completely different to those of past days. When Fangio and Moss, Brabham, Clark and Stewart were racing, they truly had to drive their cars; today, the driver has so much information and technological assistance that to even try to begin to compare modern drivers with those of 30, 40 or 50 years ago is a pointless exercise.
In terms of outright bravery, those of the 1950s and 1960s will always be superior; many died and others were severely injured while driving vehicles at breakneck speeds around dangerous circuits. Today, even crashing at 200 miles per hour is likely to result in little more than a few bruises; years ago, it would have meant certain, and often horrible, injuries and death, and yet the drivers still pushed their cars to the absolute limit and beyond.
For any sportsman to be considered 'great' they also have to pass one simple test, that of being magnanimous in defeat. On this measure, Hamilton fails miserably. When he wins, it's all smiles and great joy, but when he loses it's recriminations and sullenness. He looks for someone to blame or some conspiracy against him. Last year it was all about the desire of his German team to help his German team mate, Nico Rosberg; yesterday we heard him suggesting that Sebastian Vettel had deliberately crashed into him, a ludicrous notion as Vettel's only hope of winning the championship for himself was to win the race.
Hamilton is a fast driver but the silly suggestions that he's a great, even 'the greatest' are simply not supported by the facts. He's actually a classic example of a spoilt child who found success at too young an age and now sees it as his right, throwing tantrums whenever he doesn't get his way. One wonders what he'll do next year if Ferrari, Red Bull and even McLaren start beating him regularly. My bet is that he'd chuck his toys out of the pram, quit the sport altogether and go off in pursuit of some other arena in which he can be the centre of attention with no one to challenge him.
Sad.
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