The pressures are many and big for drivers who land jobs in Formula One. Especially for drivers who land rides with the big teams — the teams that don’t just expect success, but demand it.
Lewis Hamilton encountered those pressures, and then a couple more, when he wiggled his way into the cockpit of a McLaren Mercedes car for the 2007 Formula One season.
Hamilton said the pressures he has faced had been merely challenges met and challenges enjoyed after he won the 2008 Formula One world championship in just his second season.
“Without all those difficult times,” Hamilton said, “those highs and lows, we wouldn’t be where we are today and it wouldn’t have been so exciting. I just think there were positives.”
Hamilton said this week he never let the added pressures of his age or race get to him.
“I’ve won the championship in my second year, but there is a lot more to come,” the Briton, 23, said yesterday. “I can do better, I can be fitter, I can be sharper, I can make less mistakes . . . I’ve analysed everything that’s happened this season, the positives and the negatives, and I’ve turned some of the negatives into positives. I’m enjoying the present and I really look forward to the future.”
The McLaren Mercedes driver also believes that he will handle the pressure of racing in motor sport’s toughest category better in 2009 than he did this year. “I feel less pressure. I don’t feel the pressure comes from my surroundings, I feel it comes from within,” he said. “Putting that pressure on yourself to succeed is what either makes you or breaks you. I still have that pressure on me, but I know I can control it and use it to my own advantage now.”
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