Top Gear’s Top 9: Lewis Hamilton Mercedes wins

Hamilton’s first win for Mercedes, but there was far more to it than that. Pre-V6 hybrid domination, the W04 (pictured here before its auction in 2023, because we couldn’t dig out a race pic - gah) was a monster in qualifying but woeful in race trim, chewing through tyres like a dog with its favourite rubber bone. Hamilton took pole but reckoned he’d need “a miracle” to turn it into victory.

And yet he was in control throughout, dispatching the McLaren of Jenson Button to give him clear air and then the Red Bull of Mark Webber (twice) on his way to the chequered flag. The first of many. Not that we knew how many at the time.

With a lap to go the 2020 British GP - held in front of no crowd, because Covid - wasn’t even close to being on this list. Hamilton had taken pole in by far the quickest car, and was sailing towards a routine win without a rival in sight. Textbook.

And then it all went wrong. Lewis felt his left front tyre giving up, and a couple of corners later he had a fully blown puncture with the tyre merely a carcass and more than half a lap of Silverstone still to go. What happened next was incredible: Hamilton drew on all his nous and ingenuity to bring the car home, balancing the pace he needed with, y’know, keeping the car on the island as race engineer Peter Bonnington calmly relayed the plummeting gap to the chasing Max Verstappen.

Somehow Lewis took the chequered flag with three wheels on his wagon, beating Verstappen to the line by less than six seconds having lost more than half a minute on the last lap. SCENES.

Who could forget this titanic battle? With it being abundantly clear that Mercedes had nailed its V6 hybrid engine, all hopes of an exciting season hinged on Hamilton and teammate Nico Rosberg getting stuck into a two-horse race. And lo, they did. Hamilton’s DNF at the curtain-raiser in Australia and Rosberg’s poor showing in Malaysia meant Bahrain was the first race in which they went wheel-to-wheel… and oh boy did they deliver.

This was as pulsating as it gets, with Rosberg sending any number of divebombs up Hamilton’s inside, only for Lewis to hit back each time with a masterclass of counter-offensive driving (without quite going beyond the limit). At the end a late safety car meant he had to hold his rival off on slower tyres, but somehow he managed it. A battle for the ages.

Lewis’s sweetest Silverstone win? Heading into the race he’d had a miserable couple of years, with Mercedes making a right pig's ear of the new ground effect rules and dumping Hamilton into his longest ever winless streak; more than two and a half years.

From second on the grid he read the changeable conditions perfectly, and having outfoxed McLaren and Lando Norris, he managed a tense final stint to perfection to hold off Max Verstappen and claim the top step of the podium in front of his home crowd for a record-extending ninth time. Get in there Lewis.

Hamilton took pole position in Monaco, which meant he simply had to cruise around on Sunday to take victory, right? No. Well, usually yes, but that’s not what happened.

You see, Mercedes made a bit of a boo boo when they brought him in for his only pit stop, giving him medium tyres when Verstappen and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel were given hards. The team hadn’t realised how difficult it would be to make the mediums last the distance, and Hamilton was quickly on the radio to point this out.

There was only one thing for it: 66 laps of Extremely Careful Management. On a tyre that was only projected to last for 50. Eep. In the closing stages Hamilton looked like a sitting duck, and with two laps to go Verstappen lunged for the lead, but locked up and forced Hamilton to take avoiding action. Somehow on dead rubber he clung on, later dedicating the win to Niki Lauda, who’d died earlier that week.

This one was massive. Hamilton suffered a hydraulic failure in qualifying, which left him 14th on the grid and with a mountain to climb to catch the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel, who started the race on pole and with an eight-point lead in the championship.

Lewis hauled himself back into contention with a supreme recovery drive to P4, and then the situation turned on its head when the heavens opened in the second half of the race and Vettel crashed out. Under the safety car that followed Hamilton’s rivals pitted for fresh tyres, but he stayed out, assuming the lead but gambling that the rain wouldn’t get any worse and that he could hold off the opposition on older rubber.

At the restart teammate Valtteri Bottas very nearly muscled his way past, but Lewis repelled him and Mercedes soon ordered the Finn to back off, handing Hamilton an astounding victory and converting a deficit in the championship into a lead never relinquished. Boom.

The Turkish Grand Prix was weird. Hastily resurfaced in the build-up to the race, the circuit was basically an ice rink made of asphalt, but worse because of the miserable weather that gave us the unusual spectacle of Lance Stroll starting from pole in a Racing Point.

And Hamilton was weirdly off it in qualifying, starting P6 because his otherwise dominant W11 struggled to fire up its tyres in the cold and slippery conditions. And that’s how things played out in the first half of the race: Stroll controlled the pace at the front, and although Hamilton was fast, he wasn’t able to show it because there was no grip off the racing line. Translation: overtaking was pretty much impossible.

But the race started to come towards him as those ahead pitted again for fresh rubber. Sensing his moment, Hamilton… just kept going. He passed the other Racing Point of Sergio Perez for the lead with more than 20 laps still to go, and by the time he crossed the line he’d built a gap of more than half a minute over the Mexican. On bald inters. To this day, we still don’t understand how he did it.

The result secured Hamilton his seventh F1 title, bringing him level with Michael Schumacher. “That’s for all the kids who dream the impossible,” he squealed over the radio, “you can do it too, man!”

This might be Hamilton’s most underrated win. At Monza, Ferrari were demonstrably quicker than Mercedes, locking out the front row in qualifying. Although, the ‘wrong’ driver took pole position, as Kimi Raikkonen ended up getting a decisive tow from his teammate despite not being in contention for the title. “We speak after,” said Vettel on the radio, clearly annoyed.

No matter, Ferrari could simply swap the drivers over and all would be dandy, right? Not if Lewis Hamilton had anything to say about it. At the start the championship leader made a daring lunge on Vettel into the second chicane, placing his car to perfection to barge past his main rival. The move caught Vettel out so badly that he spun off, and despite his complaints the stewards decided it was a racing incident. One Ferrari down, one to go.

Hamilton went straight for the jugular, passing Raikkonen under braking at the end of the main straight, but to his credit the Finn fought his way back into the lead.

So Hamilton deployed Plan B: continual and intense pressure, haranguing Kimi all while managing his tyres. The plan worked: Raikkonen burned through his rubber on the opening stint and left himself with too much work to do in the second. That allowed Hamilton to catch and pass him with nine laps to go, giving him and Mercedes a chef’s kiss of a win in Ferrari's own back yard. Bellissimo.

This has got to be Hamilton’s greatest triumph. Disqualified from qualifying for having a non-compliant rear wing (by all of 0.2mm), Lewis started the 24-lap sprint race in last place, but somehow recovered to finish fifth with a flurry of do or die overtakes in Sao Paulo.

And he would’ve started P5 for the grand prix itself but he was penalised again, this time for changing his engine. So P10 it was, with championship leader Max Verstappen leading the way after the first corner.

Anything less than victory would put the fate of the title in Verstappen’s hands, so one by one Hamilton began picking off cars, carving through the field until only the Dutchman lay ahead of him, some 3.5 seconds up the road.

Time to get the hammer down. Hamilton spent the next 20 laps chipping away at Verstappen’s advantage, and on lap 48 he got his first big chance down the back straight, only for Max to hang him out to dry off outside of the track. Dubious, but the stewards saw nothing wrong.

On lap 59 he got it done, brilliantly feigning a move into Turn 1 to force Verstappen to defend, before using his much better drive out of the Senna Esses to power past the Red Bull. Before he could run him off the circuit again. Sensational stuff.

It was a statement win amid a whole heap of adversity, and it very nearly set him up for a record eighth title. We all know how that worked out. Never mind Lewis, there’s still time…