RBS ambassador Sir Jackie Stewart reckons F1 pin-up Lewis Hamilton is just as smooth on the track as he is off it – after showing his mastery of wet-weather strategy for a impressive win at Silverstone.
"There's no question which driver did the best job at the British Grand Prix – Lewis Hamilton.
As I said in my last race report, Lewis is a young and inexperienced driver. I have always believed that a young driver should expect to make mistakes, and Hamilton has made quite a few in the last few Grands Prix. In four years' time, when he's got more experience and more knowledge, then people can criticise him if he keeps making errors. But I don't think he will. Because at this race he did such a good job – in the most atrocious conditions.
Silverstone in the wet is harder to drive than, for example, Monaco in the wet. It's faster, which means bigger implications if you make a mistake. So you have to be extremely smooth when you're putting power on, taking power off, introducing braking… absolute finesse is required so that you don't upset the car. In the dry, you can almost be brutal with the car; in the wet, you have to caress it.
In this race many people went off the track – Felipe Massa spun on five occasions, just by putting the power on far too early and far too hard. But Lewis drove almost flawlessly to win by 68 seconds – an enormous margin – and demonstrated that he's unquestionably the best wet-weather driver of this current generation. The Make it happen moment of the race was when he passed Heikki Kovalainen for the lead on lap 5. That gave him an open track ahead of him and, therefore, no spray from a car in front, at a time when the rain was at its worst.
Rubens Barrichello did a very good job too. His Honda car has been pretty uncompetitive, and yet he drove magnificently to finish third. He's always been good in the rain: when he drove for Stewart F1, he got a pole position in France and a second-place in Monaco, both in the wet.
The Williams team weren't as competitive as they should have been. It's been the same at all the fast circuits where you need aerodynamic grip. But they finished reasonably well, with Nakajima picking up a point for eighth."
