Quote from evilpimp :

I really can't see how you people find him cocky O_O. All I see is confidence not being cocky. You don't see him say '' heh I beat all those people so easily it wasn't even fun''. You hear him say stuff like ''it was a great race for us and I'd like to thank the team for the great job they've done''.

No one has yet proven to me that Hamilton is too cocky. I find him confident but that's all. He believes in himself and that's what it takes to win. If you don't believe then you'll end up giving up quickly and probably lose. If he was cocky, he wouldn't win first of all because he'd think he's so good that he wouldn't need to try and he'd get his ass handed to him.

The cockyness... its just a feeling, but i'll try and explain what it is for me.
As I said, its his actions, not his words, i think they give a person away more than what they say because those things can be scripted and you can easily express any message you want with words. Actions tend to be more real, and theres been times when ive seen him celebrating wins and he likes to emphasis things, silly things like running up stairs to show he's not tired, he's full of energy and this is just a walk in the park for him.

I never get the feeling when he's talking that what he's saying is what he truely feels, he often sounds like hes trying to pass himself off as the average bloke, just like everyone sat at home watching, because they want to feel some connection to him. It feels a little too false, media friendly, charm offensive kinda stuff.

Confidence is being able to run round the Nurburgring when its been absolutely lashing it down, you've dumped it into the gravel once already, you lost a wheel of the car to some freak incident the day before and gone flat out into a tyre barrier, and now you've come to the conclusion that despite it being a wet track, your going to go out onto dry weather tyres because you believe you can still drive at a decent pace and when a dry line comes you'll be on the right tyres to make a move.
Confidence is being a good 30-40sec ahead of your rival and any other driver, when the weather is horrible, people are sliding off everywhere, and your still going round as if your season depended on you making up a 40+ sec gap, not defending one. So i dont think confidence covers what im refering to, he's clearly got bags of that, you'd have to in order to do the things he's done with so little experience,

Dont get me wrong, i love the guy, and he's got to where he is by being exactly who he is. But 'cocky' to me sums up a little of his personality IMO. He's still a geniunely nice guy, but i think he likes to try to put on a bit of a show for the cameras from time to time.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

First time I've agreed entirely with PaulC2K posts.

Steady on fella!

Quote from JCTK :

a). if you look CAREFULLY, he didn't even touched Heikki, he was already way ahead as they turned into T1, but because he knew his teammate was there, he slowed and gave him enough room for Heikki to drive past round the outside again. Heikki had that slide because his left rear wheel touched the white line on the outside of the corner, not because Lewis touched him.

b). he passed only ONCE by short cutting, and that was a marginal call by the stewards already.

c). can you refresh my memory a bit here~? I can't remember when did Lewis actually punted someone off to pass them. I could be wrong through... Alonso at Bahrain(?) when his front wing broke maybe a second before running into Alonso. If you remove the front wing while going in a straight line, it doesnt need front end grip as its not turning, its no longer creating the force pushing it into the ground making it maybe 5-10% faster, and he's got the slipstream of another car helping too.
If you go back to the actual incident, people were suggesting Alonso brake tested him, because they came together so quickly, far faster than slipstream alone would have done, but renault provided the telemetry to prove he was no slower, and Mclaren showed the corner of the front wing broke off maybe half a second before he drove straight into the back of Alonso.
Its as much a sensible comment to suggest Lewis is a bad driver for running into the back of Alonso as it is to say Kimi is a bad driver for running into Sutil. Neither were intentional, but the result of the car doing something unpredictable.

d). you need to watch that GP2 race in Turkey again...
Indeed he does.

Is Germany know for a good track?
I hope so

I see what you mean PaulC2K and I kinda agree. But I (for now) don't find him cocky but rather overconfident for what racer he really is and maybe a showoff. If he likes to put on a show for the camera then that's not being cocky for me that's just rather showing off a little to make the F1 more interusting (which is needed at times o_O).

Btw, I never watched GP2 they don't pass it here.

But I actually agree with what you said there that his actions don't necessarily reflect what he says.

I find it hard to believe people can't see some arrogance in Hamilton. What about when he was interviewed on ITV after he rear ended Kimi in the pits? When he said, "I don't know what happened" and took no responsibility for the incident. Also the fact he said, "Sorry to Kimi if I ruined his race..." No ifs about it really... Then calling the back markers, "The monkeys at the back." He'd be one of them monkeys if Ron had his way, had Kimi stayed at McLaren.

I don't hate the guy and respect his talent, nearly on the cover of every single karting magazine I owned back in the day!

I wouldn't class his race in Turkey GP2 great, sure the come back was impressive but he only managed to get 2nd because he drove across oncoming traffic (http://youtube.com/watch?v=xjotF2Bwbmg)... He forced other drivers to slow significantly and avoid him while he tried to spin his car around. Again one of his `panic` moments we are seeing when things don't go his way. Had he waited till the pack past like he should have then chances are he wouldn't have made the podium.

lol Keiran name me a driver with no arrogance!

There's arrogance and there's arrogance. Some drivers are always arrogant, some drivers are sometimes arrogant, and other drivers never appear to be arrogant. But a certain amount of self-belief, self-motivation, determination and arrogance are prerequisites to success in motorsport, without doubt.

But not many of the current F1 drivers are especially arrogant (depending on where you set the datum).

Everything isn't black and white you know. Like with everything else there's degrees of arrogance. Personally I'd say most of the rest of the field come off as less arrogant than Hamilton (with the possible exception of Alonso last year). Not "without arrogance", but less.

Quote from keiran :

I wouldn't class his race in Turkey GP2 great, sure the come back was impressive but he only managed to get 2nd because he drove across oncoming traffic (http://youtube.com/watch?v=xjotF2Bwbmg)... He forced other drivers to slow significantly and avoid him while he tried to spin his car around. Again one of his `panic` moments we are seeing when things don't go his way. Had he waited till the pack past like he should have then chances are he wouldn't have made the podium.

Ouch.. I've never seen that before. That was just plain dangerous if you ask me.

Quote from wien :

Everything isn't black and white you know. Like with everything else there's degrees of arrogance. Personally I'd say most of the rest of the field come off as less arrogant than Hamilton (with the possible exception of Alonso last year). Not "without arrogance", but less.

I'm not even close to be an Alonso's fan but I think this is a question that needs to be made :
Do you know any spanish?

I mean, most things you can see on the british (specially the british) press are not only awfully translated, but turned into a media-bashing exercise to discredit this very guy.

I can assure you that if you knew spanish and listened to what he said, he was always being confident, but quite rarely cocky (even though sometimes he was better off with his mouth shut, he admitted quite plenty of times that he speaks his mind, and he also said that this gets him into trouble). He 'expected' things, not took them for sure. Pretty a lot of those small details got lost on the translation, purely because of interests (you can't have a WDC to be famous if you want to make famous the guy of your own country, you need to choose), or so I see it, which considering I have seen and understood the live interviews in his native language and then the sensationalist brit media (obviously spanish media was also quite some sensationalist), should be a quite informed opinion.


Back on Hamilton : I agree with keiran in a number of points, I respect the guy's hotlapping skills and his ability to drive in rain, but that's all about it, he hasn't shown to be a great overtaker on F1, and often his way of overtaking lacks respect for the other drivers and forces them to make weird maneuvers to avoid collision. He is fast, but that's not all that's required in F1.

@PaulC2K : He did hit Alonso's car twice. The first time was when the front wing took some damage, the second one when the front wing apparently flew into pieces and he did hit him again.

About that race on Turkey, remembered me one of Schumi's races the last year he was racing on F1 when he had a puncture or so -can't remember-, went last, and when he was up on the points, several laps before the race end, something happened to his car and had to retire. What remembers me of this race is the fact that both were on complete focus, while the driving style and the pace at which Schumi was cutting time was a couple of steps above Hamilton's race.

Anyway, it's good to have competition. If Ferrari was dominating again with no challengers it would take away a big part of the fun. How many times before have 3 drivers been tied in points? And the leader changed that many times? And 4 drivers within 2 points?

It's getting better and better.

Quote from PaulC2K :

Bring on the slicks next year, and the aerodynamic changes/reductions the following year??

No, the aero rules are coming in in '09 with the slicks and KERS.

As far as the Bahrain incident, Hamilton's front wing was damaged in the previous corner but only fell off on the straight just before the incident. If you want to look at poor driving standards, Alonso should have been DQd from Monaco for that never-going-to-happen T-bone of Heidfeld and his many brake tests earlier in his career (not the Hamilton incident, that wasn't a brake test).

Quote from duke_toaster :

No, the aero rules are coming in in '09 with the slicks and KERS.

As far as the Bahrain incident, Hamilton's front wing was damaged in the previous corner but only fell off on the straight just before the incident. If you want to look at poor driving standards, Alonso should have been DQd from Monaco for that never-going-to-happen T-bone of Heidfeld and his many brake tests earlier in his career (not the Hamilton incident, that wasn't a brake test).

Sometimes you get the feeling Alonso doesn't realise friday practise isn't a race.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feslxpzokuk

Hamilton isn't a raged driver like alonso(used to be) but he finds him self doing alot of foolish mistakes which question his racing IQ.

Quote from JCTK :

a). if you look CAREFULLY, he didn't even touched Heikki, he was already way ahead as they turned into T1, but because he knew his teammate was there, he slowed and gave him enough room for Heikki to drive past round the outside again. Heikki had that slide because his left rear wheel touched the white line on the outside of the corner, not because Lewis touched him.
....

"
Q: But an amazing first few laps when you were trying to get past Heikki.
LH: Yeah, that was some close racing. I got a great start at the beginning, but to be honest, I lifted too early into turn one. Heikki had the outside line, so he had the grip but unfortunately I was on the inside and I was just sliding, sliding across. There was nothing I could do to avoid him, I think we tapped or we touched and I think it was no problem for him. Then I had another opportunity on the exit of the last corner but that’s not a place to overtake really. We were almost side-by-side and I had an oversteer moment and the last thing I wanted to do was take my team-mate out, so I just tried to keep it on the track. "

http://www.formula1.org/news/headlines/2008/7/8060.html

Quote from Hatemelol :

I think we tapped or we touched

hmmmm

Oh Tristan you can be a cock sometimes. From watching the GP I got the impression Lewis was happy to let Heikki take Maggotts because he knew he'd have him soon enough.

I have to say please don't underestimate the effort it took to type this post properly give how utterly ratarsed I have accidentally become. Some words I have deleted and re-typed five times.

I do believe there was a little contact between Kovalainen and Hamilton:

Video:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ENMBQNYR
or
http://w17.easy-share.com/1700877845.html

Screenshot:

I rewatched it on youtube and there was indeed contact. It's a fact. And that is what sent kovi a bit sideways and touchin the curb and then having to correct his oversteer. That's why before I said he attacked his teammate a little too early and should have waited till the field was settled.

Quote from evilpimp :

I rewatched it on youtube and there was indeed contact. It's a fact. And that is what sent kovi a bit sideways and touchin the curb and then having to correct his oversteer. That's why before I said he attacked his teammate a little too early and should have waited till the field was settled.

"Attacked"~? Check out how far he was in front as they turned into T1, and how much Lewis slowed down again then... since you got so much time to go through the evidence as to whether they really touched, what I mentioned shouldn't be too hard visbly to find out...

if it was an attack, he could easily have gone a bit faster and just runs him off onto the runoff on the outside...

he didn't mean to touch him, he just don't have the habit of leaving extra room, I advice he reads Becky's "guide to suviving T1".

Lewis was ahead before the corner but had to much speed so tryed to slow down so to not cut off kovi as he would inevitably get a better run out of T1 which would cause worse contact, this caused him to understeer more and into kovi's back wheel rather than either kovi having to slow and lose say 4 places out of T1 or not see lewis and the both of them being taken out. TBH there is nothing to be gained out of this debate.

Quote from JCTK :

"Attacked"~? Check out how far he was in front as they turned into T1, and how much Lewis slowed down again then... since you got so much time to go through the evidence as to whether they really touched, what I mentioned shouldn't be too hard visbly to find out...

if it was an attack, he could easily have gone a bit faster and just runs him off onto the runoff on the outside...

=/ by attacked I mean tried to pass too early which put him in the position to slow down. At least it looks to me like he went for the pass on kovi too and last minute realised that unless he slowed the hell down they'd both end up out of the race.

But anyways, kovi's a great driver, caught it and kept going.