“The amount of bandwidth he still has available when he’s driving a car at the limit is very impressive,” says Shovlin. “Lewis can still have a lot of his brain thinking about what he’s doing with the tyres, the strategy, while he’s pushing flat out.” Over years of experience in karts, in simulators and in Grand Prix, his brain has become finely attuned to the forces going through the four patches of rubber – no bigger than the sole of a shoe – that are his only connection to the track. “I understand that it takes, they say, 10,000 hours to master a craft,” Hamilton says. “I started when I was eight. Every single weekend: practice, practice, practice.”
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