Lewis Hamilton once admitted part of his approach to F1 at Mercedes was ‘too extreme’

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Lewis Hamilton is about to enter his 20th consecutive season in Formula 1, and he might be under more pressure than he ever has been.

Ever since joining Ferrari last winter, things have failed to click for him. It feels like leaving Mercedes was a bit of a mistake.

He’ll know fairly soon into the 2026 F1 regulations whether that truly was the case, but he can’t afford to dwell on it.

Hamilton knows that the clock is ticking, and hard work is the best way to return to the top. He has to rally behind his colleagues and help extract the best from them to have a chance.

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Hamilton might have left Mercedes at the worst time, but he still achieved a lot in partnership with the Silver Arrows.

Their relationship might have been strained by a lack of performance towards the end, but Toto Wolff was already concerned about Hamilton’s ‘shelf life’, and he might have been right to be.

READ MORE: Five worst moments of Lewis Hamilton’s F1 career including Chinese GP woe and Italian GP disaster

Lewis Hamilton admitted his Mercedes approach to F1 was ‘too extreme’

Mercedes had ‘started to annoy’ Hamilton before he left at the end of 2024, and Wolff agreed that the time was right for him to pursue a new opportunity.

For 11 years, he had been a consummate professional, showing everyone exactly how a world champion should act and approach his work.

But, in a conversation with Jonathan Ross back in 2015, he admitted that he had been too restrictive away from the track. It might have hurt his social life.

“If anything, I’ll speed it up. Up until this year [2015], I had always sacrificed everything,” he said. “So, I never ever really went out. I think last year I might have went out three times. It’s probably a bit too extreme.

“I think this year, I don’t have any regrets about anything that happened this year and things I didn’t do. I just tried to make sure I juggled everything.”

Nowadays, he attends a lot of events and has a much larger presence than he had in public 10 years ago. Part of that may be down to the rise in social media, but it might have helped to make him a happier driver.

READ MORE: What F1 CEO said in private as he watched Lewis Hamilton lose 2021 title at Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

How impressive was Lewis Hamilton during the 2015 F1 season?

Hamilton called one F1 rule change ‘stupid’, after a double points fiasco at the end of 2014 left him with a sour taste heading into the new campaign.

But he managed to put it behind him and burst out of the blocks the following season, winning three of the opening four races.

Between races at Spa and COTA, he would win five of six times, failing to win once, when he retired on a peculiar weekend in Singapore, as his car suffered electrical gremlins.

He eased to the title by 59 points, and arguably, it was the easiest ride he had alongside Nico Rosberg. He was simply too strong.