A respectful partnership filled with camaraderie. Few people would use those terms to describe Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg’s relationship as Mercedes teammates. Most people describe those four seasons from 2013 to 2016 as nothing but toxic, with both drivers trying to outperform the other. This has many-a-time led to on-track incidents, controversial moments, and accusations being thrown back and forth. Tensions rose to an all-time high in 2016 when the season-long championship battle went down to the wire, and the German took victory. That was the first time Hamilton was beaten by a teammate over a season, and what he did next decided his fate in F1.

The 2016 season was decisive in Lewis Hamilton’s career because everything that went down changed him for the better. He could’ve stayed salty about the championship loss and never gotten to where he is now, or he could’ve accepted defeat and continued on his path to greatness. Fortunately for him, he did the latter, revealing how he’s different now.

Lewis Hamilton has worked toward becoming a better teammate and person

As toxic as Hamilton and Rosberg’s relationship might’ve looked from the outside, they’ve both since spoken about their mutual respect for each other. While it might not have looked that way when they were teammates going at each other’s throats, that is the case now. That period made Hamilton want to change, and at a recent meet and greet with students at the Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Malaysia, he talked about that change.

Hamilton was asked how he’s different now compared to 10 years ago, the seven-time champion replied, “I look back, and I see someone that was massively driven but someone that was struggling with a lot of things and didn’t have the tools to cope with some of the things that I was experiencing. I was reacting from those. I’ve really spent a lot of the last six years doing a lot of self-work, and I can be just a better teammate and a better person, and be about really creating positive impact and creating opportunities for other people.”

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He continued, “I definitely would say I’m proud of where I am today, still making mistakes, and that’s okay.” Although he did make changes himself after the 2016 season, it wouldn’t have been without Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff that Hamilton would’ve continued racing.

Toto Wolff had to give Lewis Hamilton a pep talk after the 2016 season

When Rosberg defeated Hamilton that season, the Brit did not take it too well. Speculations were going around about Hamilton wanting to leave Mercedes because he felt betrayed by the Brackley outfit. After the falling out with Rosberg, Hamilton also seemed to have distanced himself from Wolff, with the pair not speaking to each other. Wolff had finally had enough and revealed he asked Hamilton to have a chat with him. 

Wolff said, “A key moment was at the end of 2016 when we didn’t speak to each other for a while. So I invited him to come to my kitchen in Oxford and sit down and have a chat. The analogy I gave to him is that also I have arguments with [my wife] Susie. Even if we shout at each other, even if we have this argument, there’s never thought of divorcing, and that’s why I said to him, ‘I don’t want to divorce you, and neither do you. Because I want the best racing driver in our cars, and you want to have the best cars.'” This seemed to have worked, and the partnership was still going strong.

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How do you think Lewis Hamilton has changed since that 2016 season?