Why Lewis Hamilton Is the Best British F1 Driver Since Nigel Mansell
It was at the midpoint of last season's British Grand Prix when Lewis Hamilton solidified his status as the modern-day Nigel Mansell.
Having been beaten by his Mercedes-team-mate, Nico Rosberg, for three consecutive races, Hamilton's season slumped to a new low in qualifying, when he effectively decided against taking pole position, aborting his final effort under the misplaced belief that the track was too damp to improve his lap time.
Starting out of position in sixth, Hamilton, according to BBC Sport's Andrew Benson, vowed to switch to "attack mode" in his efforts to chip away at Rosberg's 29-point lead in the drivers' championship, and he remained true to his word.
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He dispatched Nico Hulkenberg and Sebastian Vettel after just four corners, and within two laps of the restart following Kimi Raikkonen's crash on the Wellington Straight, he had made his way up to second place, just five seconds adrift of Rosberg.
It is in that situation—head-to-head, dog-eat-dog, him-versus-me—where the greatest champions of sport usually perform at their best. It was no different at Silverstone on that July afternoon, when Hamilton, shortly after his first pit stop, sent ripples through the timing screens.
On the 26th of 52 laps, Hamilton, on the hard-compound tyres, recorded a lap of one minute, 37.176 seconds, a time that, according to F1 Fanatic's Keith Collantine, was "over two seconds faster" than any driver had produced until that point.
And it remained unbeaten for the rest of the race, with no driver able to come within 0.3 seconds of Hamilton's time, per the same source, despite ever-decreasing fuel loads and some cars fitted with the theoretically faster medium tyres.
Had Rosberg not retired from the lead on Lap 29 with a debilitating gearbox problem, Hamilton's raw pace would have laid the foundations for what could have been the race of 2014 with two team-mates—one the home favourite, the other his closest rival—fighting for the victory in the British GP.
Comparisons with the iconic 1987 event, which saw Mansell defy the odds—breaking the Silverstone lap record 11 times in the last 15 laps, as he told F1 Racing magazine (h/t ESPN F1)—in hunting down Nelson Piquet before passing the Brazilian at Stowe, would have been inevitable.
Perhaps the memories of '87, and the vivid image of the two Williams-Hondas hurling nose-to-tail down the Hangar Straight, were swirling around Hamilton's mind when he told Sky Sports' Pete Gill how he was "gutted not to have a wheel-to-wheel race."
Denied a crowning "Mansell moment" he may have been, yet Hamilton had shown ferocious levels of speed once typical of the 1992 world champion, and the nature of his performance, at a time when all was against him, deserved a more spectacular, Nigel-esque conclusion.
Hamilton is said to lack the common touch of the man affectionately known as "Our Nige"—his detractors cite his residence in Monaco as evidence of his supposed disconnection from reality—but it is undeniable the two-time world champion shares many of the traits that made Mansell a folk hero.
And most of them ultimately revolve around his knack of creating drama.
Like Mansell, the charm of watching Hamilton throughout his career—or at least until very recently—has been found in his ability to produce entertainment, be it beneficial or detrimental to his personal prospects.
On a given race weekend, it was once impossible to predict which Lewis Hamilton would take to the track: the one with supreme speed, perfect judgement and overwhelming bravery, or the one who would act as his own worst enemy, blindly waltzing toward his own downfall.
As was the case with Mansell, who could follow up an assured victory by spinning off at the next round as a direct result of pushing too hard, you can never be sure just what Hamilton will do in a race, just that he will do something.
Also linking Hamilton and Mansell is the trajectory of their careers, which have contained feast-and-famine cycles.
After finishing second in the drivers' standings in '86 and '87, Mansell only won three races across the following three seasons, and it felt as though, despite the British driver certainly possessing the talent and speed to win the world championship, his chance to join the elite had passed him by.
Yet his return to Williams in 1991 was the starting point of one of the most dominant periods of F1 history, with Mansell winning 14 grands prix over two seasons, making up for lost time.
The same is true of Hamilton, who after arriving in F1 with a bang by claiming nine victories in his first two seasons, culminating in his maiden title triumph at the final round of 2008, was starved of success.
Hamilton won just 13 races across the next five years as Vettel, the most triumphant driver in that period, claimed 38 victories and four world championships.
During that spell, as McLaren failed to recapture their form of '07 and '08 and Hamilton's private life trickled into his professional one, there was a genuine risk of him becoming a one-title wonder, unable to fulfill his potential.
His switch to Mercedes, though, led to Hamilton finally receiving the championship-winning car he craved, and the 30-year-old has made the most of his opportunity, winning 15 of the 26 races since the start of 2014.
The 10th race of that run, last year's United States Grand Prix, saw Hamilton break Mansell's record of 31 wins, according to BBC Sport, to become the most successful British driver of all-time in terms of grand prix victories.
It is not just their success and their identical approaches, but their journeys—and our privilege in witnessing and sharing the many highs and many lows of their careers—that have made Mansell and Hamilton the greatest, iconic British F1 drivers of their respective eras.
For all the comparisons between Hamilton and Ayrton Senna—the Mercedes driver himself told MailOnline's Jonathan McEvoy of his hopes of equalling the Brazilian's three world titles this season—it is another driver of that generation, one a little closer to home, to whom he is closely linked.
For Our Nige, see "Our Lew."
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