Jolyon Palmer believes Lewis Hamilton peaked as an F1 driver in just his second season

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Jolyon Palmer has picked the 2008 version of Lewis Hamilton as the best, despite what he went on to achieve with Mercedes.

Hamilton won his first world championship with McLaren that year, snatching the title away from Felipe Massa with an iconic last-lap, last-corner overtake on Timo Glock at the Brazilian GP.

Massa won more races than Hamilton (six vs five), and they finished level on 10 podiums apiece, but the Brazilian driver’s hat-trick of retirements cost him (his opponent only had one).

When will Lewis Hamilton retire from Formula 1?

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Jolyon Palmer fondly remembers 2008 Lewis Hamilton

Asked to pinpoint Hamilton’s peak on the F1 Nation podcast, Palmer went all the way back to his second season.

To back up his argument, he pointed to the British GP, where Hamilton produced one of the finest performances in the sport’s history. He finished one minute and eight seconds ahead of second-place Nick Heidfeld and lapped every driver below the podium places.

It was the largest victory margin since 1995 and remains the only instance of a driver winning by over a minute in the 21st century.

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“I would say 2008 was Lewis coming in with aplomb,” said Palmer. “Some of the drives he put in that year… you think back to Silverstone, when he was clearly a class ahead of the rest, and he nearly lapped the whole field, didn’t he?

“The skillset that he had, he had the team fully singing off his hymn sheet.”

‘He just wasn’t massively challenged’ – The problem with Mercedes-era Lewis Hamilton

Hamilton won six titles in seven seasons with Mercedes between 2014 and 2020, arguably the most dominant period the sport has ever seen.

In 2014, he won 11 out of 19 races, or 57.9%, and a year later he scored podiums in 17 out of 19 events.

Palmer says his first few seasons at Mercedes were almost as good as the early McLaren years. The only problem is that he didn’t face the same level of competition.

He had too much for teammate Nico Rosberg in 2014 and ’15, while the German’s successor, Valtteri Bottas, was further adrift. Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel briefly threatened the dynasty but couldn’t sustain a challenge for a whole season.

“We’re completely disregarding the Mercedes years here because young Lewis was so exciting when he came in,” said Palmer. “When you think of Hamilton in those earlier Mercedes years, some of his drives then as well…

• READ MORE: Jolyon Palmer says Fernando Alonso has come closer to ‘perfection’ in F1 than Lewis Hamilton

“You think of the Bahrain one [in 2014] with Rosberg coming out on top. That was such a display, as well as having pace.

“The races at the end of ’16, I know he didn’t win the title, but when he went on that run, and he had to win every race to try and beat Nico. The Brazil Grand Prix where we think so much about Max, Lewis just romped it [he won by 11.5 seconds], in a different league as well.

“That was an unbelievable part of his career, and he just wasn’t massively challenged, so it’s difficult to quantify it there, but you could still see the skill that he had.”