Originally Posted by MKSixer
From people in the know...
Frank Williams: “ If you said to me that all the drivers today are free and they're all desperate to get into Williams, I would say: 'Send in Lewis.'”
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Paddy Lowe: "He's tremendously good at controlling a car in oversteer. We saw that from the first moment he got in our car. We saw the data, and on every entry we could see there was a massive correction on the steering, and our normal drivers would have been bitching like hell that the car was undriveable, yet he didn't even pass comment. So with a driver like that, you're better equipped to push the boundaries to new levels. Speaking generically of that characteristic, a lot of the performance limit of a car is set by stability; if you can't hang on to it, you will have to introduce understeer in that zone. But if you have a driver better able to deal with oversteer in those zones that induce it, then you will have a less-understeery car elsewhere and therefore more total grip over the lap. The great drivers over the years - Senna, Schumacher, Mansell - have all had that ability. Like for like compared to other drivers, they want more front end."
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James Allison: “The level of drive that Lewis has, and indeed all these multiple champions have, is quite staggering. You can think you’re a competitive person, you can think you’re a driven person, and then you bump into someone who really is and you realise that actually you’re oh a sort of middle of the road lackadaisical drifter by comparison.”
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Heikki Kovalainen: “He’s very good at driving when the car doesn’t have the maximum aero load and the car is moving around a bit more and you’re kind of sitting on the [edge of the] mechanical grip, and on the tyre grip, if you like. “He’s very good at that – he’s got some special sensors in his a*** that he can just tiptoe on that edge just a bit beyond everyone else, I think.”
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Pedro de la Rosa: Reflecting now on the events, de la Rosa said that his views on Hamilton changed totally on the second run that the now six-time champion did.
"That's when my mind changed," said de la Rosa, speaking to F1's Beyond the Grid podcast.
"We had two cars, we were testing there, [and] it was his first ever Formula 1 experience. He did a run, and he was nowhere, you know.
"I remember looking at his data with Philip Prew, my race engineer back then. We were looking and Philip told me: 'The boy will need to improve a lot over the years...it's a long road for Lewis, but he will be good, but we just have to give him time, blah, blah'.
"And I thought 'yeah, yeah, yeah'. I did a run, came back, looked at the times and I saw Lewis was fastest.
"You know, on the second run! And I looked at the data and I said: 'What happened?' [They said:] 'Well we gave him new tires'.
"So I looked in the data, and he was so fast through Copse, Becketts, Maggots... that then I just realised the potential of Lewis Hamilton. Just looking at the data for a couple of seconds I realised we had a massive problem."
"It was his first ever F1 test, his second run in Silverstone, and I realized this guy is very, very fast.
"I've seen a lot of drivers in my life. You know, I've been with very good drivers, I would say, and I feel very honoured of that. But when I saw Lewis, I thought "wow, this is very special". And then, when the season was over, I knew that Lewis would be in the race car and I knew that Fernando was signed.
"And I was happy with that, because I said to myself, if I was in, Ron [Dennis]'s feet, or Martin Whitmarsh's feet, I would take the same decision, because Lewis is incredibly fast and Fernando as we all know, is mega."
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