Former Ferrari and Williams team manager Peter Windsor believes that Lewis Hamilton’s “feel for the brake pedal” is the greatest Formula 1 has ever seen, with the seven-time World Champion having a driving style more similar to fellow seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher, than his hero Ayrton Senna.
Based purely on statistics, Hamilton is the greatest Formula 1 driver of all-time, with the 38-year-old having more wins and pole positions than any other driver in the history of the sport.
Whilst he does have the same number of titles as Schumacher, he boasts 12 more race wins than the German and has 35 more pole positions.
Interestingly, though, Schumacher claimed seven world titles faster than Hamilton, with the father of Mick Schumacher having taken 13 years to win seven World Championships, whereas Hamilton took 14 years.
READ: ‘No reason’: Toto Wolff makes claim about Lewis Hamilton contract extension
The duo are commonly being compared, with Senna usually included in any conversation regarding the three remarkable drivers.
When discussing the trio, Windsor rated Hamilton’s driving style as being more similar to Schumacher’s than Senna’s, who explained what the Mercedes driver’s “greatest attribute” is.
“I would say Lewis is nearer to Michael. In terms of the way he uses the throttle and the brakes and the steering, I think he’s much nearer to Michael,” Windsor told his Twitch stream.
“In fact, I think he’s ahead of Michael in a couple of significant areas and I think he’s a little bit softer than Michael in all his inputs, particularly with braking.
“I think Lewis’s feel for the brake pedal is probably better than any driver in the history of the sport in terms of how he applies it and the rate at which he comes out of it.
“That speed of movement – or the slow motion of movement, the suppleness of movement – is just astonishing with Lewis. I think that’s probably his greatest attribute. And that of course then gives you such a stable platform around which you can do everything else with the throttle and the steering.
“I think Ayrton was fairly linear actually in the way he drove, which was very Lewis-like, but his corner entries weren’t as early as Alain Prost’s to my eye.
“If you took 1988 as a good year to compare the two, Alain would always have a slightly earlier turn in than Ayrton, so his corners were a little bit shorter.
“And Ayrton always had that business of the throttle blipping where he just wanted to feel that moment to get the power on, whereas Lewis and Michael never had to do that in order to find that moment.
READ: FIA to defy drivers and continue with controversial move
“So you may think, what made Ayrton so great? Well, what made Ayrton so great was his incredible precision.
“If the average great grand prix driver can shave a wall to within two centimetres, Ayrton could do it within half a centimetres 100 times over – apart from the apex of Mirabeau in the middle of the [1988] Monaco Grand Prix, which we have to put down to a lack of concentration.
“For sure Lewis, for sure Michael, for sure Nigel Mansell, for sure Alain Prost [and] Niki Lauda all had phenomenal judgment, but I think Ayrton possibly took that to a higher level.”