JPM on Hamilton and Mclaren...

fair enough, and for the record I agree with you.........Lewis Hamilton shouldn't be compared to anyone past or present, just yet.......

and about him being i the fastest car.......Ron Dennis didn't walk up to him one day and say, "Here you go kid, this is the fastest car on the grid, go out and win like you've been trained to do!"..........NO he didn't!!!........Lewis Hamilton has spent hundreds of hours with the team developing the car, it didn't just happen overnight!! HE WORKED HIS BUTT OFF TO HAVE THE FASTEST CAR HE COULD GET!!! and now he's enjoying the fruits of his labor!

 

If he s doing anything its helping highlighting F1 everywhere for one.. and correct me if Iam wrong but didnt MS have a gokart track in his backyard !
IT makes no odds how they got to be in F1 its about coming up with the goods and he is plus giving you something to talk about..

 

I don't know how much, if anything he had to do with the development of this year's car. There was some question in the off season as to whether he even would drive this year (they were considering DeLaRosa i think). I'm not downplaying his accomplishments, i'm simply stating that the lad had been extremly lucky to be at the right place at the right time. I mean how would Ron Dennis know if this kid had the goods at 10 years old? His success and the speed to which it came was due to his innovative training and luck. The talent is there but without the other two, nothing would have happened

 

MS's parents had a gokart track this is true. But that's not the same as being basically groomed all your life by one of the top teams in F1 to drive for them. No one else has gottne into F1 in that way. Success has come quickly for Hamiltion, as it should be. I suspect quite a few drivers would be quite good just as quickly if they were brought up and trained this way, but that's just my opinion.

 

+1 although the guy has done a tremendous job.

 

i think a lof of you are demeaning the efforts of the Hamilton family.
Lewis's father took on 2 jobs to pay for what was initially his sons hobby.
Yes RD sponsored them after a certain time, but you can bet that the Hamiltons still had to make compromises etc even after that date - oh and if lewis had not given the goods in the various formats he raced in then i suspect he would have been dropped by RD and mclaren very quickly

 

Agreed. The money was there as long as he performed extremely well. That's quite a bit of pressure to race under and still be successful.

 

Imagine what a pain in the backside JPM must have been if Ron paid for him not to race...

 

Read this link: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?storyID=7254

Ron has made LH, he could have done that to anybody ...
Pete

 

great so tell me where I can sign my kid up!!!

 

If you believe that would you like to buy London Bridge from me?

You must not have been watching any of the races so far this season.









Unbelievable bias in these posts.

 

And you show no bias in your opinions??? yeah sure. That you are surprised ANY opinion is "biased" is your fundamental flaw. All opinions are biased somehow bub, including yours.

 

Has he overcome any problems, or even had to race his way from the back of the field yet? He's not great yet. Case closed, he has much to prove. No one is saying he can't do it. But he hasn't. What made MS, Senna etc great was winning in cars that had no business winning. Senna in 93, MS in 96 in the wet in spain, things like that is what made them legends. LH hasn't done a damned thing like that yet. The hysteria following him is still undeserved. He is winning in a car that is supposed to win.

 

+1

 

Can i sign up too?

 

Thus why could this not be applied to anybody? Anybody with good reactions can be trained to be racing driver.

Most people become good racing drivers because they passionately wanted to be, and thus they practiced and practiced and learn. You are only born with a small part of it. Ron and this witch doctor (disappointedly born in New Zealand like me ... obviously clever but wrong use of cleverness IMO) have found a new way of programming the driver into a person.

LH was just the first guinea pig.
Pete
ps: A big part of being a very fast driver is being completely robotic, thus doing the same thing lap after lap ...

 

Do you have anymore to this story? I haven't heard anything about Anthony Hamilton taking 2 jobs to pay for Lewis to race or anything like that. I understand RD met LH when he was 10 and had won a McLaren Mercedes kating event then signed LH when he was 13 and paid the bills from then on.

 

Agreed, it's an innovative training program and probably the wave of the future. It was simple, get the best kater you could find at a very young age and put him through the program.

 

+1

 

All this talk of anyone can do it is starting to piss me off.
Its like saying anyone can be an Astronaut
Or Billionaire
Or President
This is a combination of a burning desire, luck, persistance, talent, an attitude of doing whatever it takes, and in the case of Auto racing; money.
I smell sour grapes.

 

+1. If any of you have actually raced yourself, you might be a little less harsh. I race in Formula Renault and I see young kids coming up with varying amounts of backing and talent. Jazeman Fihrman has lots of backing because he has lots of talent. I have seen him develop and he is simply better than anyone else. Lewis Hamilton was simply the best at every level while being the youngest at every stage. Of course he had backing. This line of thinking that anyone could do it with backing is absolutely stupid IMVHO. Talent is really rare and the differences between LH and so many hopefuls are small but insurmountable to those who just don't have it. If you have raced yourself against kids on the way to somewhere you will know what I mean

 

+1

 

The jerk in the white house now proves anybody can be president......
If I or you were trained from 13 years old to be an astronaut i'm sure by the time we were old enough, we'd be pretty ok at it, lol. A billionaire, i wish i could figure out how to train for that.

Think about what has been written. Get the fastest Karter and run him though the program. MacMerc runs a karting series called stars of tomorrow or something. That's where Hamilton came from. He won the series at 10 i think. It takes talent to win this. No one is saying Lewis has no talent! Design this program to train this young man for formula one. A huge advantage that no other driver ever had . I would think it would shorten your learning curve, which seems to be the case. I'm not saying that he's no good, but what i am saying is that people need to give the lad sometime so we can see what he is really made of. Yes he's very quick, and seems not to make mistakes. But to make him out to be a rare super talent so early is bad for him.

PS does anyone know what happened to Wesley Graves? He was one year younger than LH and was in the program with him.

 

Wow Luis what a great post, dubbya a moron? Exactly

 

I am not meaning to attack LH personally, but the "process" that McLaren are using and possibly the robotic and boring end result.

And I disagree with your post as when we are born, unless disabled, we are all equal and have just as much change to become what ever we like. It is then our lifes external influences that shape what we do actually become ... thus stick any normal child in a race car at a young age and keep them motivated and they will be pretty good at it. The problem usually is the motivation and many stop and look for something else that interests them. Look at the child tennis stars for example. Look at Tiger Woods ... infact massive parallels here except nobody played mind games with Tiger as they did with LH.

Basically I do not like the fact that Ron Dennis has chosen a child and engineered a race driver through simulation, neuroscience and psychology. This removes the human element in the sport which if we are really, really honest with ourselves is a big part of why we like the sport. The other is the cars themselves.

What Ron has started means that other teams will have to do the same, thus in 10 years time all drivers will be virtually identical and the racing will be even more boring than what it is now, because they will not have weaknesses ... we might as well remove the driver and replace with a computer program before the race starts. We already have a situation where only 1 out of 4 cars can win and really only the driver that starts on pole ... usually, because they have the start line advantage.

Just imagine race when every single driver reacts perfectly to the start signal and thus they leave the start line in a perfect line, block perfectly and assume a perfect follow the leader race, each car spaced near exact to the aero restrictions for passing ... they all finish, bang, bang, bang all 1 second apart ... :yawn:

I have to give credit to Ron and McLaren but the passionate race fan inside of me is sad, 'cause we have seen a glimpse of the future and we will never see a Gilles, a MS again ... because both Gilles and MS also made mistakes and in MS's cases resorted to tactics that would be removed in simulation training as just wrong.

Yes I was a poor man that raced cars, but I gave it my best and yes I was upset watching others with less talent win in far better cars ... but then I never blamed that because I do actually believe Enzo Ferrari in that if you really want it, you will find the money (he used to criticize Maserati over this as they used to retire claiming funds issues). Plus Senna had all the money he needed and I've never knocked him over that ... cause he could have spent it on wine and women, instead he went and did a couple of million laps in his gokart.

As far as I am concerned (yes LH er, McLaren will probably win the next 6 maybe 8 WDC's in a row as long as McLaren keep building good cars) the very last part of the "sport" is not a "sport" any longer; we have found an engineered solution!
Pete