Mario Andretti explains why Lewis Hamilton would have been a Formula 1 world champion in the 1960s

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Lewis Hamilton has won Grands Prix and world championships across multiple eras of Formula 1. In fact, he holds the record for the longest gap between first and last victories.

There are more than 17 years between his maiden triumph at the 2007 Canadian GP and his most recent win in Spa last year. Kimi Raikkonen is second on that list (15 years, six months), with Michael Schumacher (14 years, one month) third.

The difference between the McLaren MP4-22, Hamilton’s first F1 car, and the Mercedes W15 is stark. Visually and aerodynamically, they are a world apart.

But speaking on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast earlier this year, legendary driver Mario Andretti explained why Hamilton’s talents would also translate to 1960s F1 machinery.

Mario Andretti says the ‘human element’ would see Lewis Hamilton win in any era

Andretti won his one and only championship in 1978, but he’d made his F1 debut a decade earlier. The field that year included Bruce McLaren, Jack Brabham and Graham Hill.

At the 2022 US GP, the then 82-year-old drove a 2013 McLaren car. That was the year Hamilton joined Mercedes and won the first of 84 races for the Silver Arrows.

The volume of data and technical support on offer to drivers in the modern era is infinitely larger. But Andretti is adamant that the fundamental ‘human element’ remains the same.

On that basis, he thinks Hamilton, and indeed Max Verstappen, would have been stars in his era too.

“Did you come away from that experience in 2022 fully with the belief that Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, all the stars of today, could have got the job done back in the ’60s?” host Tom Clarkson asked.

Andretti replied: “Absolutely. I always said, ‘Yesterday’s champion would be champion today’. It’s a fact. That’s one thing I know is a fact.

“The difference is what you’re driving, as far as the technical side of it and all that. But the human element, as much as today you have data and all that information and the engineers know exactly what you’re doing when you’re out there, has not changed. Trust me.”

Why Fernando Alonso is a better world champion than Lewis Hamilton

Oliver Bearman says Hamilton still has more mental strength than any other driver on the grid. That’s an attribute he’s needed in recent years.

The Ferrari driver is currently facing a third winless season in the last four years. He hasn’t truly gelled with the ground-effect cars and may be looking forward to the upcoming regulation changes.

Jacques Villeneuve says Hamilton has always been guilty of ‘disappearing’ for a handful of races within a season. He was able to get away with this during Mercedes’ period of dominance, the Williams legend argues.

By contrast, longtime rival Fernando Alonso is ‘always there’. For Villeneuve, that makes the Spaniard the superior world champion.