Formula One news
Hill not worried about Hamilton's pace
24 April 2008While many might start to get worried about Lewis Hamilton's performance in the last two rounds of the Formula 1 championship former Formula One world champion Damon Hill believes there is nothing to worry about for the 23-year-old McLaren driver.
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Lewis Hamilton enjoyed an incredible first season in Formula 1 last year as the rookie driver finished second in the drivers' championship being just one point behind in the end on Kimi Raikkonen. In 2008 he started with a race win, but was unable to finish on the podium in Malaysia and Bahrain and thus some are already started to get worried about him. Not Hill though, the former F1 champ believes there is still plenty of time for Hamilton to prove his talent. "When you start in Formula One, you have a clean sheet of paper," Hill told The Times. "In his first year, Lewis drew this beautiful picture. Now you don't turn over a new piece of paper and start again in year two, you have to improve on the picture you painted in the first year. But it is always going to be very, very difficult to embellish that when the next step is to win virtually every race and the championship.
"I have every faith in Lewis as a driver and as a potential champion and I think, after such a brilliant first year, he is bound to come back to the norm - but Lewis will respond to that challenge. Sometimes with a driver who is extremely ambitious, they can overextend. You see that in nearly all the great drivers - Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher overdid it occasionally.
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"Lewis is the sort of person who has got to where he is by pushing himself beyond his limits and continually extending those limits, and sometimes that will show up and even appear to be slightly desperate. But I don't think that is a bad sign. It's much better to have that than it is to have a driver who never puts a foot wrong but never does anything brilliant." Hill knows that in Formula One things are never easy and, while he believes that a maiden championship for Hamilton could come this season, it may be some way away.
"I'm not saying he won't do it, I think he will. He is an extraordinary character, but every driver gets to a point where they realise there is another level of difficulty. It doesn't matter whether you are Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna or Nigel Mansell, it is always more difficult than you thought, and that's the tough bit."
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