"I’ve seen kids that have nothing"- Here's why Lewis Hamilton doesn't like the word 'tough'

Lewis Hamilton feels the word 'tough' cannot be used to describe the task at hand in F1 because there's so much worse that people in the world deal with.

The Mercedes driver visited Africa during the summer break this season. Speaking about his travels, he revealed that he saw kids who had nothing and still had to survive. In comparison, he felt the world of F1 was nothing and could not be called 'tough'.

After detailing how an F1 team requires so many vital cogs to work in unison, Lewis Hamilton refused to term the whole process 'tough'. He said:

“So it’s definitely tough. But I don’t like the word ‘tough’ because I’ve just been in Africa and I’ve seen kids that have nothing, so nothing is ever really that tough. It’s something we say in our minds, right? But that should never be an excuse, it takes work and I wouldn’t really want it any other way.”

Lewis Hamilton talked about how life would not be worth living if everything was easy and there were no challenges. He talked about the importance of the 2022 F1 season, a season that has been a struggle for the team, as an opportunity to acknowledge that they did not do a good enough job and had to challenge themselves to get better.

He said:

“To be honest, if every day was easy and you’re just getting through it, it just wouldn’t be a challenge. I love the challenge of working with everybody and challenging the people and them challenging me. All acknowledging this year that we haven’t done a great job, but it doesn’t mean we can’t do a great job in the future. We have done it in the past.”

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I wish there were only a few tenths between cars: Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton admitted that he'd rather want the sport to have a scenario where there were only a few tenths between the cars. This was something that F1 had last season as Hamilton and Max Verstappen had a titanic battle with each other. He said:

“Does it hurt? I wouldn’t say it hurts. We all know what it could be. We would love to be in that battle fighting, and I wish that all the cars were a lot closer and we were all having a much better battle closer to the front. I wish there was only tenths between us all, you know? But that’s not the way our sport is.”

Mercedes has certainly closed the gap to the front over the course of the season. It will be interesting to see if the team can put up a fight against Max Verstappen in the upcoming races.