I mean, I think there’s reason to dislike the way he’s behaved over the years outside of whether someone is a Hamilton fan or not.
I didn’t particularly care for his comments about sacking drivers if they refused to drive if a fatal accident happened during a race weekend for example.
I honestly don’t care if LH wins or loses either, there are valid reasons to not like Hamilton’s style too. That said, what I care about very deeply is sportsmanship. And honestly, in my case, I felt that there was something really off about the mental and social media warfare they seemed to try to engage Hamilton in. I think that comes down to Helmut Marko more than anyone else. In my view that guy is the most toxic presence in formula one and unfortunately that heavily influences the perception of max and red bull, almost certainly unfairly.
I made the mistake of looking at comments threads in motorsport sites after some of the incidents last season and one of things that was clear was that red bull, in inciting so much fury at Hamilton, whether they felt it justified or not, was stoking up something a lot darker. Now that absolutely has nothing to do with max personally, but it really reflects very poorly on red bull, who must have been aware of the end result of stoking up that level of anger at someone who is black. Hamilton is absolutely not beyond reproach, but there was an undertone last year that I really really hated.
The thing that really changed my mind last year about Max personally was the monza incident where he span the rears hard when he was beached over Hamilton, with apparently no regard to the driver underneath him.
Even if he knew that the rears weren’t near his head, it was still imo unacceptable. A shard of carbon fibre being thrown out in that direction could have been really bad let alone what could have happened had the wheels been in a slightly different position.
I get that it’s heat of the moment stuff, but in a sport that dangerous it was concerning to see that lack of emotional control.
BUT he’s young, and I’m hopeful that what we’re seeing is him learning. Which is why I’m watching how he behaves in the radio comms. He was told to calm down by his engineer during the race but we didn’t hear max, so I think there’s still more to what he’s saying on the radio and how stressed he is in the car and that, imo, will come into play later in the season.
The thing that frustrated me most last year was that it was clear that Max didn’t actually need to be as ruthless as he was. The dodgier moves he made undermined his talent and I actually think he might have won it much easier had he not decided to push the line as hard as he did.
We saw that tonight I think. He didn’t need to do anything controversial to win and I really enjoyed what I saw.