Lewis Hamilton beats Michael Schumacher in the battle of Formula 1’s seven-time world champions.
That’s the view of Williams team principal James Vowles, who worked with both of F1’s greatest drivers during their time with Mercedes.
Hamilton has long been compared to Schumacher, with the pair the only two seven-time champions in the sport’s history.
He is already attempting to emulate the German in ending Ferrari’s long wait for a title – as Schumacher did with his first championship with the Scuderia in 2000.
However, Hamilton has been struggling in red, recently calling himself ‘useless’ post-session and suggested Ferrari replace him.
At the Hungarian Grand Prix, the 40-year-old qualified 12th, 11 places below teammate and pole sitter Charles Leclerc.
Despite this, ex-Mercedes strategist Vowles is in no doubt that Hamilton was the more naturally skilled compared to Schumacher.
“Michael wasn’t the most skilful in the car. I’ve already said that was Lewis,” Vowles admitted on the High Performance Podcast.
“But he knew how to extract every millisecond out of himself and every millisecond out of the team.
“Lewis just had these – just as I said – oodles of natural talent.
“When you go out in FP1, he’s like an octopus all over the wheel.
“He’ll change every setting on the wheel, near enough, and explore it. But it’s what makes him incredible.
“And if I give you an example of it, there was a time where, on simulation in Brazil, it said ‘hold seventh gear up the hill.’ And within two laps, Nico [Rosberg] was doing exactly as we asked him to do.
“Within two laps, Lewis went, ‘This doesn’t feel right,’ dropped back down to sixth – and was finding a tenth there.
“It took until the end of the session before Nico saw the data. Lewis is this optimiser. He’ll use data as a starting ground, but he’s got a feel beyond anything else for it. And he has no issue exploring the boundaries.
“That originally manifested itself in – you’d often see him go off at Turn 1. He’d find the absolute limit of braking and it would just push him wide to Turn 1, then botch the lap. And one of our biggest frustrations with him was that out of 20 laps, he did one. Like, come on – you’ve got to do more than that.
“Actually, if you look at the maturity Lewis had between 2013 to now, you’ll see he completes every lap. He’s now found a way of still gaining the experience of the mind of the lap out of it.
“He was this perfectionist. Braking was his strength, his forte – maximise everything under braking, and then, ‘I know the limits of the car,’ and build from there and get into the rhythm of things.”
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Vowles did later concede that there were ‘downsides’ to Hamilton’s process of understanding his car.
It comes months after former McLaren mechanic Marc Priestley admitted the Brit’s ex-girlfriend, Nicole Scherzinger, was the biggest contributor to his performance.
“Now that came with some downsides,” Vowles added. “Often, he would change the car so quickly that you’d lose yourself.
“Certainly, as engineers, it’s difficult – when your data is all moving, the track’s moving, the grip’s moving, the driver’s moved everything on the steering wheel… You don’t know where you are.
“And then he comes in and we’ve changed mech balance and aero balance and you think, ‘OK— we’re starting from scratch here, basically.’
“That’s some of the reasons why at times you’ll see Lewis drop backwards – and often, when he jumps forwards again, it’s because he’s gone to a setup that’s known, and now he’s back on the money.
“But he’s able to do that – and many drivers aren’t. He’s able to explore often and accept that he’ll have a whole session perhaps in the wrong place on setup. But he’s learning from it. And that’s Lewis all over.”
Is Lewis Hamilton leaving F1?
Overall, the picture hasn’t been overly positive since Hamilton traded Mercedes for Ferrari, as he’s yet to record a podium in a feature race.
He is also 30 points off teammate Leclerc in the drivers’ championship, and has been advised to leave Ferrari already.
And fans were left worried that a potential retirement was on the cards after Hamilton teased a big announcement on social media.
But, he featured in an advert for a non-alcoholic beverage instead.
Who is the greatest driver?
Murray Walker, who covered more than 350 Grand Prix races during his career, remains to many the greatest sports commentator.
Before his 2021 passing at the age of 97, the Brit hero joined talkSPORT’s ‘My Sporting Life’ for an in-depth look at his career.
Within it, Walker was tasked by host Danny Kelly with the age-old question of picking the greatest driver to have sat behind the wheel.
Walker told talkSPORT in 2012: “Well, I have to preface my answer, Danny, by saying that this is a subject of unprovable opinion.
“But in my subjective, unprovable opinion, the greatest driver who’s ever lived is a chap that an awful lot of the audience will never have heard of.
“It’s a bloke called Tazio Nuvolari who lived before the war and was a gigantically charismatic, multi-talented Italian who had a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant career.”
He added: “I’ll say the greatest driver who’s ever lived in the history of Formula One, in my opinion, is Juan Manuel Fangio, who was five times world champion in the 1950s.