A record 71 pole positions and counting.

Of all Lewis Hamilton's many skills as a Formula 1 driver, this is one talent he has really made his own.

Race after race, Hamilton redefines the boundaries of the possible with those flat-out laps that decide the grid order - and quite often the race victory, too.

It is a moment when the essence of a grand prix weekend is distilled into 90 seconds of purity - the quickest cars on earth, and 20 men driving as fast as is humanly possible.

One man in particular.

"It's shorter," Hamilton says. "It's intense. It's enthused with so much energy. The pressure is at the utmost. You go out, and you have that one lap to perfect and deliver. I love that challenge.

"It is the ultimate performance, putting all the pieces of the performance together and I have always loved that. That's when you attack. It's when you really go into battle. The car is light, it is the fastest you get to drive at any point in any weekend and it all comes down to that one moment and the decisions you make and I love it."

In a sport where margins are measured to the thousandth of a second, Hamilton is frequently several tenths quicker than other drivers - even ones with the same car.

Ten poles in 16 races this season, a year when Mercedes have faced real opposition for the first time since 2014, tells its own story.

These are laps that make the jaw drop, that generate awe and admiration, even among his rivals.

But they are not just down to Hamilton alone.

A qualifying lap is the culmination of all the work an F1 team puts into the weekend, and the driver could not do it without the people behind him.

So how does Hamilton do it? BBC Sport took a deep dive behind the scenes at his Mercedes team to find out.

The talent

Hamilton describes himself as "really just a small chink in the chain of a large number of people who make it possible".

It is not false modesty - it's a statement of fact. But it is undeniable that it would not be possible without the ability of the man in the car.

Mercedes technical director James Allison has worked with all three of F1's current multiple world champions and describes Hamilton as "a magnificently quick driver".

How quick? Well, in 10 years of F1 Hamilton has had five team-mates. In terms of championship points, Fernando Alonso has equalled him (in 2007), and Jenson Button (2011) and Nico Rosberg (2016) have narrowly beaten him in the title standings once, even if there were extenuating circumstances each time.

But in raw qualifying pace - taking an average of their speed over a season on quickest laps where a comparison is possible - no-one has ever been faster.

"In the races we could have some great battles," says Button, Hamilton's team-mate at McLaren between 2010 and 2012.

"He'd win a race, I'd win a race, and it was really close between us. But when it came to qualifying, it wasn't. He was just immense."

The psychology

Talent on its own is not enough, though.

An F1 car is a complex object, and it needs to be fine-tuned to get the best out of it. And a driver is a human being, prone to distractions and weaknesses, which need to be eliminated for him to operate at his best.

Hamilton admits this has been a flaw in the past.

"It is definitely an area I really wanted to improve this year," he says. "It has always been something I have enjoyed and generally excelled at. [But] it is all about the small percentages, and getting those extra little bits out of your own performances has really been my goal this year and I have managed to do that.

"You've seen how I live my life over the years and I really think the balance I allow myself to make is what enables me to perform the way I do.

"I arrive at the weekends in a positive frame of mind. I don't have any baggage. I generally don't give a you-know-what about what anyone says. I know my values, who I am and what I am about. I know what I am here to do, so I do it.

"I guess it is about building a force field against all the negativity that generally tries to penetrate. Nothing generally gets in and I know how to race and drive. It is about doing it."

The change in 2017 has been noticed at Mercedes. Chief strategist James Vowles describes an upshift in Hamilton's "attitude and approach to a race weekend".

"There were times last year," Vowles says, "where he would be on the back foot sometimes coming out of a Friday and it would take him time to build that confidence and ability back up as he went into the race and in the most extreme cases it would allow Nico to out-qualify him.

"He has aged a bit, he has become more mature with things. Things you know have failed you in the past, you fix them and improve them if you want to move forward as an elite athlete and that is what he is.

"So he has taken a reflection of what happened last year and improved on the small aspects things that he believes contributed perhaps to him not extracting everything in 2016. I am seeing a man who has changed and fixed those things and adapted. It is an impressive sight to see."

The general perception of Hamilton is of a mercurial character who relies on raw talent to make up for weaknesses in the more scientific side of the requirements of a grand prix driver. But the general perception is wrong.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff says: "Lewis is a hard worker. He is very diligent in his approach and on a very steep development curve. He is someone who is never satisfied with his own performances and tries to better himself every day.

"He never settles. He is never happy with where he is as a racing driver and a human being. He wants to optimise, he wants to develop, and we have seen it very much in the team.

"He has become very much part of the leadership of the team. When times are difficult, he is calm and motivating the other members of the team but he is also capable of being very objective and natural about his and the team's performances and that made him become a strong pillar of the team."

Vowles adds: "Lewis this year has made another step as a driver. His approach to the weekends is a lot more scientific than I have seen from him before. He applies more science, more work, more practice. He is working much closer than I have seen him before with the team, because he knows everything matters in terms of the championship.

"That is not to say he wouldn't have done that in times of old. [But in] 2014, '15, '16 we had a car advantage and Lewis was a little more internalised; he didn't necessarily need to rally the troops as much as he is at the moment.

"This year, I have seen a new step from Lewis where he is able to properly exploit everything the team can provide him so they provide him everything he needs to be able to go and get pole position.

"It is no one element. It is not that he watches more videos or looks at more data or spends more time talking to the engineers. It is everything that he has improved by 1% that allows him to extract a lot more from the car."

Hamilton says: "Ultimately you've got these really intelligent individuals and it's about trying to make sure you get 100% out of each and every one of them. And they need to understand what they need to give you.

"If you don't give them the information of what you need, they can't guess. Building on our routine so they know exactly what they need to do to provide me with the platform I need to deliver what I deliver, for me to arrive into qualifying in that frame of mind I have. Collectively that's how we have the poles we have."

The all-important laps in the the top 10 shoot-out at the end of qualifying - or Q3, as it is known - are just the climax of a long period of preparation.

It starts back in the factory, where engineers pore over data and try to give the team what they think will be the best baseline with which to start the car at a given track.

Through the three practice sessions, the team work with the driver to hone the car so he feels as comfortable and confident as he can taking it to the limit. And then comes the crucial hour on Saturday afternoon.

"Once you enter qualifying," Vowles says, "you will notice quite a change of atmosphere in the team - doesn't matter whether it's Q1 or Q3, it is quite serious and orchestrated."

The team have to negotiate their way through two knock-out sessions, making sure they judge the lap-time improvements of others correctly to avoid embarrassing early exits, making tyre choices and doing just enough running so the car, tyres and driver are in the best possible condition for the last 10 minutes when it really counts.

Given the complexity of modern F1 cars, with hybrid engines, energy regeneration, hundreds of settings and temperamental tyres, it is no easy matter.

"You need to make sure the driver has entirely bought into the psychology of what you are trying to do in qualifying," Vowles says. "There is no point giving him a set of tyres and then saying off you go. You need him to be providing feedback.

"If you say we have a soft tyre, you need to work with him and say: 'What do you need to get a feel for the baseline? One lap, two laps, a push lap? How does the braking change when we change engine modes, is it significant enough that you need a little practice before Q3?'

"A lot of it is about getting the driver in the right mental state. The car performance is one aspect of things but you are asking drivers to find the absolute limit of their and the car's performance and to do that you need the driver in the right mindset and bought into what the team is doing as a programme.

"Over the recent years he has just got better and better by learning how to combine that enormous talent with the understanding of the technical side of the tyres and the power unit and the chassis and bringing it all together."

The lap

A qualifying lap is a journey into the unknown. It is the fastest the car will ever go on that track, and by definition it is something the driver has never done before.

A driver is doing something most people have only a vague understanding of. He is trying to take the himself and the car to the very limits of possibility. It requires a combination of balance, bravery, feel, dexterity and commitment that is almost indescribable.

From the outside, on television, it might look relatively controlled, but that is the mastery of F1 drivers. In reality, the car is on the very edge at all times.

It's not so much about not losing control - although that is the extreme of failure. It's more like a dance, although there is no easy metaphor.

At each corner, the driver must brake as late as he can without locking a wheel, enter as fast as possible without sliding too much - although the car is sliding all the time - get on the accelerator as early as he can without spinning the wheels too much.

All that while being subjected to extreme g-forces - up to 6G longitudinally during braking, well over 5G laterally in the fast corners.

Mercedes non-executive director Niki Lauda, a three-time F1 champion, says: "A normal human being, they operate in a normal way. They say good morning, good evening. They have breakfast, lunch and dinner and they live their normal life. Sometimes more or less exciting.

"But when you are a racing driver and you have to deliver, that is a different ball game. Lewis can certainly deliver.

"It means he sits in his car and says: 'It is one lap now, I have to get pole position.' And he switches something on which very few people have, and this on-off from nothing to everything he is able to do in no time, and then he can squeeze out the last couple of tenths.

"Easy to do that when you push hard, then you make a little mistake, you go too far, you brake too late, you do all these kinds of mistakes. But on his laps he does no mistakes and drives the car right to the limit on every metre of the circuit. That makes him different."

Even once out on track, the lap has to be prepared before it is driven.

Source:
courtesy of BBC SPORTS

by BBC SPORTS

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