The perception of Hamilton’s success and his cars vs Schumacher, Alonso, Verstappen etc.
There’s no doubt that every successful driver gets “car merchant” allegations, but no one receives it more than Lewis. I get it, because his era of title winning dominance coincided with Mercedes dominating 2014-2016 in a manner unlike anything we’d ever seen before, which to many fans was incredibly boring and thus soured the perception of Lewis’ success during that time. I think it’s quite a common sentiment that success in a year dominated by one car/driver with no real title battle feels less special regardless of how impressive the achievement of said driver was.
The purpose of this post is not to make comparisons between drivers and argue who is better or worse than one another, but is an observation about how Hamilton is, in my opinion, unfairly perceived by many as someone who didn’t have to fight for his championships and who isn’t capable of competing with a lesser car. Even Jacques Villeneuve, the beacon of Formula 1 knowledge, echoed the same sentiments in a podcast last year. Alonso is credited with competing for the 2010 and 2012 championships in an inferior Ferrari, Max for his 2025 miracle comeback and controlling the 2024 championship and Schumacher for his Bennetton titles and early Ferrari days. All of those are perfectly valid, yet from my point of view Hamilton doesn’t get given the same reputation so easily.
The most extreme anti-Hamilton arguments I’ve seen claim he had the best car in 11 or 12 seasons (2007, 2008, 2012, 2014-2021) but only won 7 titles- which is outrageous. His McLaren days alone are enough to refute these arguments, because despite winning a title and taking it to the final round a further two times I don’t think he had the best car over the course of a season until 2014.
People are often mistaken by thinking McLaren had the best car in 2007 because they had a firm grip on the championship until the implosion late on, but the reason for their advantage was largely down to the performance of their drivers. 2008 is a season of Hamilton’s that is often criticised because he made a lot of mistakes, which is true but he also fought for and won the championship in what was quite clearly not the best car, in fact they weren’t any better than BMW in the first half. There were weekends that season where he was just a different level to the rest of the grid.
Then there‘s 2010 which is often forgotten about, primarily because Alonso got closer to the championship in a car that was also inferior to the Red Bull- it’s also often overlooked how Red Bull had the dominant car that year because they didn’t dominate the championship. There’s the obvious caveat that the championship wouldn't have gone down to the final race without Vettel’s reliability woes, but there was also a large chunk of the season where Vettel dipped in form and threw away wins. Hamilton had the worst of both worlds that season- he had a car inferior to Red Bull‘s and reliability/bad luck that caused a loss of points. In my opinion he was more impressive than anyone that season including Alonso and Vettel.
Then there was 2012, where McLaren gave Lewis a quick enough car (but not dominant or by a significant margin), however the horrendous reliability and pitwall incompetence prevented any chance of a title fight. Then came the Mercedes dominance, 2014-2016 where Hamilton won 2 championships and lost out to Rosberg in 2016- although it is widely accepted that he was better than Rosberg that year.
Those seasons, and the subsequently very comfortable championships for Mercedes/Lewis in 2019 and 2020, made it easy to believe that it was the exact same situation for the championships Lewis eventually won with ease in 2017 and 2018. There‘s more to debate in 2017 with the bad luck Vettel encountered later on in the season but for 2018, I actually think Lewis winning the championship so seamlessly makes it easy to downplay just how amazing he was that season. There were weekends where Mercedes had the edge over Ferrari, but accounting for the whole season I don’t think Mercedes had the best car. The difference in pitwall operations and strategy between Ferrari and Mercedes during those years is also not as extreme as what a lot of people are willing to remember.
To sum up my rambling, I think that Hamilton’s performances throughout his career has often made it easier to believe he was driving the best car when he wasn’t. I’d argue that Hamilton had 5 seasons in the outright fastest car (2014-2016, 2019, 2020) as well as marginally the best car in 2017 and very close to if not the best car in 2021, which is nowhere near as often as it is debated.