Lewis Hamilton has admitted that he feared he might never win again and suffered mental health issues as he endured over two years without a Formula One win, ending the drought at the British Grand Prix.
Hamilton won a gripping race at Silverstone, his first victory since Saudi Arabia in 2021, a two-year period during which his Mercedes team have struggled to challenge, and the 39-year-old was in tears after crossing the line as the import of the achievement hit home.
The seven-time world champion revealed afterwards it had been a very difficult time to navigate. “With the adversity we’ve gone through as a team, and that I personally felt that I’ve experienced, those challenges, the constant challenge like we all have to get up out of bed every day and give it our best shot, there are so many times when you feel like your best shot is not good enough,” he said.
“There are so many times when you feel like your best shot is not good enough and the disappointment sometimes that you can feel. We live in a time where mental health is such a serious issue and I’m not going to lie, I have experienced that. There’s definitely been moments where the thought that this was it, that it was never going to happen again.”
The end to the win drought was earned on pace and strategy at Silverstone and rightly celebrated by Mercedes, with Hamilton admitting he had never been reduced to tears by a finish before.
“To have this feeling coming across the line, honestly, I’ve never cried coming from a win,” he said. “It just came out of me. It’s a really, really great feeling. I’m very, very grateful for it.”
After that last win in 2021, he then suffered the controversial decision at Abu Dhabi GP that cost him his eighth title in what the FIA admitted had been a human error by the race director Michael Masi and that recovering from that blow had played its part in his mental struggle over the past two seasons.
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“Honestly when I came back in 2022, I thought that I was over it, and I know I wasn’t,” he said. “It’s taken a long time for sure to heal that kind of feeling. That’s only natural for anyone that has that experience. I’ve just been continuing to try and work on myself, and find that inner peace day by day.”