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Lewis Hamilton has been part of the F1 grid since 2007 and has won at least one GP every season. When one looks back at such an illustrious career with 103 wins so far, it's hard to pick a singular moment that stands out from the rest. In this piece, we try to do the impossible as we try to rank the top 5 wins of Hamilton's career.
To rank these wins we've taken into consideration the machine he had at his disposal, the competition, the situation in the championship, and how unlikely the method in which he won seemed before the race.
#5 2008 British Grand Prix — Lewis Hamilton winning the race by a 68-second gap
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There aren't many races early in a driver's career where one can look at and call the driver special. Hamilton, however, is an entirely different story. In just the second season of his F1 career, he was bearing the burden of racing at Silverstone as a British driver.
If there is one thing that can be said about the British fans who fill the stands at Silverstone, it is that they are a passionate bunch. And when it comes to supporting, no one does it better. With that support, however, comes the pressure, and the pressure of being a British driver at Silverstone is unbelievable at times.
Lewis Hamilton reached Silverstone as the driver who was going to get the most support on the weekend with the fans cheering his every lap. Things got tricky when the circuit received torrential rain and it was at this stage that the then McLaren driver's genius came to the forefront.
The Briton would fend off Kimi Raikkonen's advancements early in the race. With a pitstop blunder by Ferrari compromising Raikkonen's race, however, Hamilton was left on his own at the front as he started putting together a masterclass.
Streaking away from the field and lapping into an entirely different league from the rest of the field, Hamilton finished the race a whopping 68 seconds ahead of everyone. His performance just made everyone realize that the young driver was destined for big things in his career.
#4 2018 Italian Grand Prix — Beating Ferrari at their home race
The context of what happened at Monza in 2018 is, more often than not, lost to the casual fan. At that stage in that year's championship, Sebastian Vettel was still within striking distance of Lewis Hamilton in the championship. The German had dominated the earlier sessions at Spa and Monza and was the favorite, with Ferrari having much better straight-line speed than Mercedes at the time.
The weekend, however, saw an entirely different combative side to Lewis Hamilton. The Mercedes driver was in an "all-out attack" mode as he tried to extract the maximum that he could from the car. He qualified P3 behind the Ferrari pair, just a tenth slower than the pole position time.
Hamilton, however, turned the race upside down on the very first lap as his attempt to overtake Vettel resulted in the German spinning out. With his main championship rival out of the race, Hamilton went on to overtake Kimi Raikkonen to win an improbable race in enemy territory. The Briton did not look back after this race as the tide of the championship turned in his favor.
#3 2018 Singapore Grand Prix — Pulling off one of the best qualifying laps in F1 history
Lewis Hamilton's Q3 lap at the Singapore GP in 2018 has to be one of the best qualifying laps in the history of F1. To put things in context, in 2018, Ferrari's shorter wheelbase car held an advantage over Mercedes on street circuits like Monaco and Singapore.
At the Singapore GP weekend, the championship was still hanging in the balance. Although Hamilton was able to win at Monza, a win for Sebastian Vettel in Singapore would bring the German right back into contention.
Throughout the weekend, Ferrari apparently held a distinct advantage over the rest of the field. Even during qualifying, it did appear that the Italian team had the quicker car.
Despite that, in Q3, Lewis Hamilton pulled off a stunner. Despite being on the back foot for most of the weekend, the Briton shocked everyone with a lap that was a whopping six-tenths of a second clear of Vettel.
From that point onwards, on a street circuit like Singapore, the path was clear for Hamilton as he nailed the start on Sunday and never looked back. Winning a race that was a supposed guaranteed stronghold for Ferrari and Vettel just took the wind out of the sails of the Italian team.
After this race, the Mercedes driver would go on to win four of the next six races while the German wouldn't win even once. There have been instances in his career where a part of Hamilton's brilliance inside the car could be attributed to the machinery at his disposal but not at Singapore. That weekend and that lap was all Lewis Hamilton and will go down as one of the best laps in the history of F1.
#2 2020 Turkish Grand Prix — Lewis Hamilton judging the conditions perfectly and winning in a slower car
For the 2020 F1 season, Mercedes produced a car that was much faster than the rest of the grid. When the F1 circus reached Turkey, however, it was greeted with a very strange set of conditions.
The track was too slippery because of the new asphalt that had been laid. To add to this the gloomy conditions meant that the temperatures would remain low and prevent the surface from gripping up.
The Mercedes was just paralyzed in these conditions as the car could not extract any kind of grip from the track. Lewis Hamilton qualified for P6 while teammate Valtteri Bottas would qualify P9. Conditions got even worse before the race as light rain before the start meant the teams had to start on intermediate tires.
What followed next was a race of attrition where drivers like Max Verstappen, Alex Albon and Lance Stroll would keep on tripping over each other with driver errors or poor team strategy. Meanwhile, Hamilton would drive a measured race where, slowly but steadily, he would take over the lead of the race. What was more surprising was that he pulled off an entire race stint on just one set of intermediate tires.
In a season where Mercedes would more often than not drive into the distance, this was the perfect example of the brilliance of Lewis Hamilton, who would pull off a win despite driving a piece of slower machinery.
#1 2021 Brazilian Grand Prix — Winning the race after serving a 25-place penalty
It's not often that you see a driver win a race on the track after picking up a 25-place penalty — a 20-place disqualification before the sprint qualifying and then a 5-place penalty for engine change. The oddity of the task that Lewis Hamilton was able to accomplish at the Brazilian GP becomes apparent in retrospect because, in all fairness, one doesn't expect a driver to win from such situations. A podium perchance, but a win seemed improbable.
Yet Hamilton did just that, and he did that by picking off one driver after the other. Before anyone knew it, he was behind Max Verstappen fighting for the lead. The fact that it was a must-win race for Hamilton after Verstappen had dominated the last two races makes it all the more special in a hotly contested title battle.
Lewis Hamilton might face a lot of flak for winning races with superior machinery but if one is able to replicate what he did in Brazil, that is a mark of special talent.
