Wolff: Hamilton operating on 'extremely unseen level' in F1

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff believes F1 is witnessing the performances of a driver, Lewis Hamilton, operating on a level "unseen" in the sport.

Saturday in Barcelona, the seven-time world champion conquered his 100th pole position, a century landmark built on 26 poles with McLaren between 2007 and 2012 with the remainder achieved with the mighty Mercedes squad.

After yesterday's milestone, Wolff noted an interesting statistic provided by Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin.

"If you pull all his pole laps together in a video it would last two hours – so that just shows what he has achieved," said Wolff.

"Every time I get asked the question about was this his best lap, best race… he’s just operating on this extremely unseen, never seen level," added the Austrian.

"And today again, probably the car wasn’t perfect and he just edged the other ones out and the hundred poles is incredible."

• Read also: Hamilton 'ecstatic' to secure landmark century of poles

As usual, many will contend that Hamilton has been the ultimate beneficiary of Mercedes' superior engineering excellence, a claim Wolff dismisses as mere "jealousy", insisting his star driver is simply doing something "better than everybody else".

"There will always be people that will see it that way," said Wolff. "I think the stronger you get, the more jealousy and negativity you will encounter.

"It’s totally irrelevant what somebody else says, it’s irrelevant these things and what we think in the team, if we would listen to all the noise that’s being said out there, we would be more distracted from our job.

"I mean he’s clearly the outstanding driver. A hundred pole positions and growing as a personality on and off track, clearly there is something that he does much better than everybody else.

"He wouldn’t be a seven-time world champion if that was not the case.

"But I also think that the combination of team and driver needs to function and it has functioned over the last seven years and continues to grow strong."

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