Lewis Hamilton: Abu Dhabi 2021 heartache taken ‘long time to heal’…We Could Still Go To Court

Hamilton experienced what he described as his “most emotional end to a win” ever in F1 on Sunday after taking the chequered flag for a record ninth time at Silverstone, with the seven-time champion breaking down in tears on his slow-down lap back to the pit lane.

The victory ended a 56-race drought – the longest the 39-year-old had previously gone without winning in F1 was 10 races – since the penultimate round of the 2021 season in Saudi Arabia amid Hamilton’s tense title duel with Max Verstappen.

In the following season-ending and title-deciding round in Abu Dhabi, Hamilton was leading and on course to claim a record eighth world crown before Verstappen overtook him on the final lap after an incorrect handling of the Safety Car restart procedure by then-race director Michael Masi, in a highly-controversial finale which the FIA later said was the result of “human error”.

Hamilton told Sky Sports after Sunday’s race that he had questioned during moments since the end of 2021 whether he had wanted to continue in the sport amid Mercedes’ subsequent fall from the F1 summit.

Speaking in the later post-race press conference at Silverstone, Hamilton said in direct reference to Abu Dhabi 2021: “Honestly, when I came back in 2022, I thought that I was over it. And I know I wasn’t and it’s taken a long time for sure to heal that kind of feeling.

“And that’s only natural for anyone that has that experience.
“And I’ve just been continuing to try and work on myself and find that inner peace day by day.”

Having suffered the heartache of losing out on becoming F1’s only eight-time champion after the most intense title fight the sport had seen for years, Hamilton returned for the following season after a winter in which he had mulled his future in the sport only to find himself and Mercedes suddenly of contention for victories and more titles after the team were caught out at the start of the sport’s new ground-effect regulation era.

That struggles for a breakthrough continued on in to this season, with Mercedes only recently finding what Hamilton has termed a “North Star” in their car development and returning to front-running contention. Hamilton’s Silverstone triumph their second in as many weeks after team-mate George Russell won in Austria after Verstappen and Lando Norris collided late on.

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