Lewis Hamilton has sent out a defiant message to Max Verstappen and his Formula One rivals, telling them the BEST is yet to come from the seven-times world champion.
Hamilton was said to be on the brink of quitting after being robbed of a record-breaking eighth crown in the final race of last season at Abu Dhabi.
But after deciding to carry on for a tenth season in the Mercedes car, Hamilton declared: “If you think that what you saw of me at the end of last year was my best, wait till you see this year.
“I am putting every ounce of my energy and time into making sure that I’m the best you have ever seen.”
Hamilton, speaking at the launch of this year’s Mercedes car, said he has never been as motivated during his 15-year Grand Prix career.
He said: “I feel great, I feel fit and I feel that through these sort of experiences, you can turn emotion into strength, into power and that is what I am doing.
“I am putting that into my training, I am putting that into my work.”
Hamilton, who starts his challenge in Bahrain next month, admits he still finds it “difficult to understand” what happened in Abu Dhabi but is using it as inspiration for his 2022 campaign.
He went on: “I took time to digest what had happened, which is still difficult to fully understand.
“But what does not kill you, makes you stronger.”
Meanwhile, Toto Wolff says he will ’never forget’ the injustice of Abu Dhabi.
“We have to move on but we are not going to forget it because that is simply not possible,” said Wolff.
“Nothing was fixed … it was circumstances and decisions that were unprecedented and how they came about - certainly for us - was a shock.
“Three laps to the end we got a message that said the cars were not allowed to unlap themselves.
“And three to four minutes later, there were two messages that came out of nowhere - obviously we now know what happened in the background, unknown to us - and then the Championship was gone, literally within half a minute of the decision-making process and that’s unprecedented.”
