Lewis Hamilton attributes recent win to karting experience
Like most fans of F1 we watched the recent Bahrain GP with much interest at Full Throttle Raceway. The lead Lewis Hamilton pulled out over the rest of the field was pretty amazing to say the least, he really had the race in his hands. The safety car changed all that in the middle section of the race, the 10 second margin Lewis had over team mate Nico Rosberg was wiped out in an instant and it really was game on!
What followed was a real game of cat and mouse, Lewis needed all of his wits, driving talent and experience to keep Rosbery at bay. You could see how hard he was working the Mercedes W05 in the latter parts of the race, trying to make his workhorse as wide as possible.
As we now know, Lewis won the race and he attributed much of his race win to his earlier karting success. We know how vital it is to get a good grounding in karting before you move onto other forms of motor sport at Full Throttle Raceway and it was nice to hear this confirmed by Lewis in his post-race interviews.
Here’s what he had to say…
“Me and Nico haven’t had a race like that since back in our karting days. There was a race we did years ago. He was leading the whole way and in the last lap I overtook him and won the race. I thought ‘he’s going to do the same to me’, and get me back. That’s what was going through my head.” A lot of times Nico was in my blind spot and I had no idea if he was there or not, so I tried to leave space. ”
You don’t know whether he’s attacking or braking later into the next corner because you don’t even know where he is. That was very difficult. But for me it feels like a long time that I’ve been able to have a real racer’s race and really use whatever skills that I’ve acquired over the years as a youngster in karting. Being able to apply them in Formula One is a lot harder but to be able to pull them out of the bag and use them again (is a fabulous feeling).”
Credit to Lewis we say and it just goes to show, karting is a staple background for anyone that fancies getting into formula racing later on in their driving career.