Lewis Hamilton renews F1 vows as Lie-gate vanishes in rear-view mirror

By Tom Cary Published: 7:59PM GMT 06 March 2010

Upbeat: McLaren motorist Lewis Hamilton is behind in love with Formula One Photo: REUTERS

For a impulse he looks identical to he would rather be somewhere else, anywhere else, in fact, alternative than with a organisation of reporters vigilant on asking him about Australia 2009. About Lie-gate.

Lie-gate. The word itself might be inconceivable (why do we endure with attaching embankment to each fathomable controversy?) but the stress of the part as far as Hamilton is endangered is really real. In actuality it informs his stream state of mind, one that the McLaren motorist described this week as "the happiest of my life".

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So whilst he instinctively winces at the correlation of how he was swayed by McLaren"s afterwards sporting executive Dave Ryan to trick Formula One competition stewards in Melbourne, of how he deceived Toyota"s Jarno Trulli out of a legitimate lectern place and afterwards refused to come purify in Kuala Lumpur 4 days later, the 2008 universe hold up does not steep the question.

Instead, he takes a low breath and starts to talk. "There was a lot to take on house after what had left on," he begins. "I caring about how people understand me. It was a feeling of "shoot, may be I shouldn"t be in the sport" rather than not in my team. This is my mental condition group and I am advantageous to have been here from the commencement [of my career].

"I never had a enterprise to expostulate for any one else. So it was not a enterprise to leave the team, only to stop racing. For a separate second it was "this is as well most to take. How do I redeem from this?""

For a whilst Hamilton"s counterclaim resource was to repel in to himself. In Shanghai, Bahrain, Barcelona, even Monaco, he was guarded, capricious and introspective; obviously worried in press conferences, he sported a soulful, saddening look.

To a healthy innate winner, of course, it compounded his suffering that he was scrabbling around in an unknown on all sides nearby the behind of the grid.

By the time we reached Turkey, however, he was commencement to see identical to his old self. And when the playground came to locale in his behind yard, Silverstone, last June, he felt amply certain to give his fans a couple of "doughnuts" at the end.

How had he snapped himself out of it? "Well, there was await from my family, team, fans, extraordinary letters and I thought "you know what, I done a inapplicable designation but I am being since a second possibility by all these people and support".

"I never for a second didn"t wish to do it, I love racing. I only didn"t know how to ... infrequently it is tough to face the music; tough to face people when you know that as shortly as you spin your behind they are articulate about you.

And for a prolonged duration of time, for months, I would travel in to a room and I am certain there are a little people who walked in to the room and they feel cool but for me I only didn"t feel positive, it was disastrous appetite and I don"t identical to that.

"But solemnly I began to realize that it was not all disastrous appetite and I had a lot of await and apply oneself from people. It done me stronger. It was a genuine clever experience.

"I don"t wish to be in that on all sides again. It"s identical to when you put your palm out to a certain dog and it bites you, you won"t do the same again.

It"s similar. I have been bitten once and you don"t wish to get bit again. I don"t ever wish to be in that on all sides again and I don"t feel I ever will be.

"I can"t contend what will occur in the destiny but I have regularly pronounced I love the sport, I love winning and winning in the right way. Integrity is really critical to me."

You could have listened a pin drop. Hamilton is obviously relishing this duration of his hold up and seeking brazen to the new season; to you do conflict with his new team-mate Jenson Button, with his former team-mate Fernando Alonso, right away at Ferrari, and of march with the returning seven-time universe hold up Michael Schumacher.

Asked about going up opposite the argumentative German, his reply once again is exegetic and strikingly mature.

"Everyone has their own opinions of his past," he says, "but everybody gets a second chance. I am certain he has grown. He"s grown in age and I am certain he will do his most appropriate to scold things he did in the past or things he did not get do in the past. It is illusory for the competition that Michael is back."

To those who follow him around the world, who watch his each transformation and have seen the approach he has loose and non-stop himself up, it has turn extravagantly transparent that, far from proof his ruin, the events of Australia and Malaysia have valid Hamilton"s liberation.