15/07/2016
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton reveals that Barcelona incident took him back to the 'dark place' of his early career.
While it was Baku, where Niki Lauda claimed, but subsequently retracted, that Lewis Hamilton's frustration got the better of him, leading to the "trashing of a hospitality room", the Briton admits that it was the events of a few weeks earlier that truly got to him.
In a Q&A session on Facebook for UBS, the world champion admitted his despair following the first lap clash with Nico Rosberg in Barcelona that took him to a bad place, hinting that further revelations will follow.
"When I was younger, if I had a bad race, I was so hard on myself, it was a real negative," he said. "I remember some races I wouldn't leave my hotel room for three or four days, not speaking to anyone, not being on my phone. I was just trying to get myself out of this dark place I'd be in. Then somehow I'd pop out of it and turn it into a positive.
"You've got to look at the situation," he continued, "you've got to try and find the positives from it and leave the negatives behind.
"I look at Barcelona, for example, it was a massive low for me," he admitted. "There's things that you won't know until I retire that I'd tell you what I experienced. The next day, I got up and I went for a run, and I'm thinking about lots of different things and it's crazy to think that the 43-point deficit that I had at the time, which seemed impossible.
"I'm only human, those days I feel like it seems impossible, but you've just got to keep going as painful as it can be and as hard as it can be. You might get over it quickly, sometimes it takes longer, but you've just got to keep going.
"Honestly I feel I'm stronger now," her insisted. "I have those days where it feels like the world's coming to an end, I'm never going to win this championship, blah... blah... blah. Look where I am now, one point behind in the championship. It shows you to never ever give up, no matter what.
"I love the challenge of the battle with myself," he admitted. "Only I know what's going on in my head. I just find my way, sometimes it takes longer to dig yourself out of something, it takes longer to understand, but I never let anyone interfere with my mental process."