Formula One news

Hill: Hamilton will be stronger next season

McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton has only just missed out on the championship title. In a battle with Kimi Raikkonen and his own McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso the Briton lost the title with just one point to Raikkonen in the final race at Interlagos. According to former F1 champion Damon Hill it can make the young driver even stronger for 2008.

"The fact that Lewis came so close to winning the championship in his rookie season will make him even more sure that he can win the title," Hill told British newspaper Mail on Sunday. "I think that if you put his performance last year into the context of F1 history, there can be little doubt that he will one day be world champion.

"Lewis, and his father, Anthony, have taken a totally positive view of what happened last year. They realise that Lewis began the year with no F1 experience and still almost won. That makes the Hamiltons, in my mind, very strong."

Hill was close to winning the Formula One championship in 1994 when he lost the championship in the last race of the season after Schumacher controversially drove him off the track in Adelaide to clinch the German's first title. Two years later though Hill clinched the title himself. "Getting so close, and losing, whetted my appetite and made winning all the more appealing," Hill explained. "I think Lewis will be similarly driven. He has learned some big lessons. From a driver's point of view, it's not enough to worry about your own ambitions. Politics and economics play a significant part of F1, because this is a marketplace as well as a sport. Lewis is a huge talent, a superb driver, but he has undergone a steep learning curve and discovered that he can be at the mercy of events beyond his control. You just have to find a philosophy to deal with it.

"Some take the view that the wheels came off McLaren with the Spygate affair but they didn't come off without a little pressure. Ferrari acted aggrieved but their budgets and their reputation have been unaffected. From a morale point of view, they have also made the transition from the Michael Schumacher era. McLaren will have suffered a setback but only time will tell how much."

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