Mercedes technical boss Allison lauds 'astonishing' Hamilton

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Mercedes technical director James Allison is full of praise for the team's star driver Lewis Hamilton after his first season working alongside the four-time world champion.

He joined Mercedes from Ferrari at the start of 2017. Despite a close-run thing early on, Mercedes went on to comfortable victories over his former team in both the driver and team championships.

Allison put a lot of that success down to the driver.

"His hunger to win, even after being on the right end of nearly all the records in the sport, is just astonishing," Allison told Autosport magazine's end-of-season review.

Allison added that Hamilton's raw speed was the most remarkable thing about him as a driver.

"His ability on a Saturday is second to none," he insisted. "And he rarely drops the ball on race day having put it on pole on Saturday.

"His disappointment in himself when he makes very rare, normally quite small, errors is also very admirable," Allison insisted. "I've worked with drivers who tend to lash out when they screw up. Lewis doesn't do that."

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Allison said that even when it came to one of the team's biggest miscues of the season - the loose headrest that cost Hamilton victory in Baku - the driver always held his disappointment in check.

"He's been completely and utterly calm and reasonable about it, even though the points swing created by an event like that is big.

"Similarly, when we were forced to ask him to take a gearbox penalty in Austria, same deal. It just didn't faze his approach to the weekend.

"Those are nice things when a driver's like that."

Allison had already spoken of how a large part of the pleasure he had received from joining Mercedes was down to getting to work with Hamilton.

"He just goes out and races with his huge gifts," he said. "When actually he's called to do something that is the right thing to do, he steps up and does it. Even when it is very, very difficult to do it and the whole world is watching.

"That's the sort of thing I mean when I say he's impressive as a man."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.