Hamilton against sharing telemetry with team mates

Lewis Hamilton has said he would like to see an end to the practice of team mates being able to scour each other's telemetry after practice and qualifying sessions.

"I go out, do my laps, do all my homework - the other guy can see everything," said Hamilton in an online interview for UBS. "I don't think they should do that. I have asked my team, I don't want to see my team mate's."

"I don't feel it's fair that he brings his 'A' game and I should be able to study his 'A' game on a computer."

Hamilton's fractious relationship with former team mate Nico Rosberg is well documented, and this year Hamilton will be paired up with Valtteri Bottas at Mercedes, so does this signal a new 'cold war' in the garage?

"I'm not against team engineers sharing data, but I think the drivers shouldn't be able to study each other's data," Hamilton insisted.

"There are times where, because you only have a limited amount of time and we have all these things we can change, sometimes you just decide to go the wrong way and start on the wrong foot.

"Unless you go back and go the direction the team's other car is going, you're just lost, there's just nothing you can do. Those are some times things you have to do, and I think for a team going forwards that's not a bad thing."

Hamilton: no plans of staying around in F1!

But in Hamilton's view, drivers sharing overall car telemetry was different to drivers seeking to data-mine their team mate's every run.

"I think it should be 'you hired me because I am the best, you hired me because I've studied, because I've won every class that I've been in, I've not missed one in terms of winning', and you're hiring whoever the next person is because they've hopefully won some things along the way as well and you're hiring them for their ultimate skill all round.

"You've got to find the limit yourself, that's the whole challenge of being a racing driver. When I get in this new car it's seeing what the limit of it is and if I can't do it on my own then I'm not good enough and I don't deserve to be there - and there are some drivers that don't."

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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.