Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton speaking with Andy Shovlin, the latter with his hand to his head. Australia April 2022
Lewis Hamilton’s “phobia of losing” has been credited as the biggest driving force behind his six World titles with Mercedes by the team’s trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin.
Hamilton said farewell to Mercedes last month, the Briton leaving the Brackley squad after 12 years together to join Ferrari in a final throw of the dice as he chases an elusive eighth World title.
Andrew Shovlin reveals what sets Lewis Hamilton apart from other F1 drivers
The Briton won six of those with Mercedes in a dominant period from 2014 to 2020 during which the team strung together a run of seven championship doubles, Nico Rosberg’s 2016 success interrupting Hamilton’s streak.
Hamilton joined Mercedes in 2013, shocking the Formula 1 paddock when he made the call to swap from McLaren to Mercedes. At the time, Mercedes were not a race-winning team and pundits questioned whether Hamilton had made a mistake.
He proved them wrong, claiming 84 Grand Prix wins and six World titles with the Silver Arrows to bring his overall tally to 105 and seven respectively.
Edging ahead of Michael Schumacher on the all-time list for race wins, Hamilton is tied with the German on seven Drivers’ titles and this year has joined Ferrari in a bid to break the tie.
Hamilton’s now-former Mercedes colleague Shovlin believes the 40-year-old is driven by his “phobia of losing”.
“Well, there are no other drivers like him, so you could definitely say he is unique, from that point of view,” he told The New York Times.
“He’s good fun to work with. He’s committed to success, as we all are, and in a team, that’s what you would ask of everybody.
“But Lewis has got his own, it’s almost like a phobia of losing that drives his work ethic.
“And that’s great because when you get a driver who brings that to the team, they are endlessly pushing, endlessly wanting to improve. And it brings an awful lot of energy to the team.
“He’s the only driver I can think of that I’ve worked with where it manifests itself to such a degree. No good drivers like losing, they all hate it. That’s absolutely standard.
“It is the work and the worry that that triggers within Lewis that I think sets him aside from most others.”
Hamilton has often been praised for his work ethic which has been noted by his fellow competitors including former Mercedes junior Esteban Ocon.
Speaking on the High Performance podcast last season, the 2025 Haas driver said of Hamilton: “He’s got a very busy life in general and seeing how he switches his focus from one thing to another, for me that kind of amazed me that he was straight away on point, back with his engineer after something completely different.
“He didn’t take 10 minutes to refocus and re-work with his engineers because you don’t have time to do that.
“He always had his paper boards with notes and he was always having notes not to forget things from one year to another, or one session to another.”
