American Beauty

Hamilton’s charge to victory in Austin was a joy to behold and left him nine points from a fourth title

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The dazzling pre-race buildup to the 2017 US GP revealed much about how Formula 1’s new owners intend to develop the sport into a global racing spectacle. But the race itself, though entertaining, told the same old story: Mercedes domination; Ferrari capitulation.

QUALIFYING

“It felt for a moment like I was dancing with the wind,” said Lewis Hamilton, as he described the intensely intimate sensation of taking his Mercedes W08 downhill from the Turn 1 peak of the Circuit of The Americas through those thrillingly fast sweepers from Turns 2 to 9. Then he caught himself, momentarily embarrassed at how easily he’d reached for lyricism in trying to explain quite how it is that he and his car have attained a peak of performance beyond the reach of any rival. A coy smile and a nervous laugh: this was the kid from Stevenage still unable to reconcile his most unlikely upbringing with his ever-growing status as a global sporting icon.

“The tyres,” he continued, “they feel like living tissue. That’s why we have to treat them so carefully to bring out their performance and maintain it.”

There was no artifice to Hamilton’s declaration of how it had felt to set his 72nd career pole position; this was sportsman-as-artist, expressing himself in as pure a manner as he knew, in a moment of joyous exhilaration. Just as there is a beautiful fluency to a Hamilton pole lap, so, too, is he effortlessly articulate when describing what he experiences while driving… so long as he is happy.