A FORMER Lewis Hamilton Formula One mechanic has revealed a running joke in the pitlane about his tumultous relationship with Nicole Scherzinger.
Hamilton dated the former Pussycats Dolls singer between 2007 and 2015 in what was a highly publicised on-off relationship.
And Hamilton was clearly impacted by the shifting circumstances of his love life, with ex-McLaren mechanic Marc Priestley revealing there was a running joke about how it changed his performances on track.
Speaking on the Pitlane Life Lessons podcast, Priestley revealed: "When he first came into this sport, we used to joke amongst the team that Lewis’s performance was so intrinsically linked to the state of their relationship.
"As in, on a good day, he performed well. When their relationship was in the doldrums, and they were so off and on, it was a bit like an emotional roller coaster.
"When he was in these low points in the relationship, you could clearly track the performance in the car to the way their relationship status seemed to be.
“We joked that there seemed to be more lap time in keeping those two together than there ever could be with anything we could do with the car!"
Hamilton and Scherzinger announced their first split in 2010, three years after they started dating months after his McLaren debut in 2007.
They were then back together months later, which sparked a famous Hamilton win at the Turkish Grand Prix that season - his first F1 win in 245 days.
Hamilton said at the time Scherzinger was "lucky" for him before they decisively split up in 2015.
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Her eventual final showing in the F1 paddock came at the 2014 season finale in Abu Dhabi when he won his first driver's championship with Mercedes.
Priestley continued: “But there was a serious point to that, in that it was about understanding and appreciating that Lewis’s emotional state clearly affected his performance...
"Lewis is a guy who’s quite emotional. He wears his heart on his sleeve so, without the ability to really control those emotions to the level that some other people might be able to do or might find easier to do, we were faced with an unbelievably talented racing driver whose performance was, in some way, affected by how his emotional state was, which varied greatly at different times over a race weekend or a season."
Priestley explained how Hamilton's mental state could lead to him coming across as petulant in press conferences with one-word answers before "disappearing" during the evening.
He added: "As engineers, our only goal was to try and improve things so that it could be better the next day or the next time out.
"To get the driver, who’s a key part of that debrief, in a state where he’s just throwing petulance [with] answers that are unhelpful to you because he’s so down, that’s not in any way productive and doesn’t help us get closer to a solution.
"But he’d often go away on a Saturday night, he’d disappear, and I wouldn’t see him on a Saturday evening. He would sometimes even cancel commitments to sponsors and partners.
"He would disappear and shut himself in a room, and he probably pondered over it for quite some time, digging himself into an even bigger and deeper hole, is how he’s described it to me in years gone by.
"He mulled it over in his mind and continued to tell himself that same story – that he wasn’t doing a good enough job. He would beat himself up emotionally.
"He would completely reiterate the negative thought processes that he’d been having that afternoon right through into the night until he went to sleep."
However, Hamilton has always had an amazing ability to shake off negativity and bounce back.
One of his most famous phrases is "still we rise", and Priestley believes that has been one of the biggest parts of his success.
He said: "But one thing he was quite good at was waking up the next day with a fresh perspective. He always said to me that this was a new day, a new set of opportunities."
"This was a case of coming in to try and do it better. If you ever see a TV interview on a Sunday morning after a Saturday afternoon where he struggled in qualifying, even today, that’s generally what you get.
"You get a new Lewis Hamilton where he’s no longer down. He’s no longer struggling with emotions. He’s now got this fresh perspective where he sees nothing but opportunity in front of him.
“He may not have expectations that he might have had going into Saturday. His expectations might have had to be reset but, in doing so, he takes away some pressure.
"He relieves himself of that burden that was overwhelming him on a Saturday. And we go into Sunday with a Lewis that’s there, ready to take the opportunities, to push like crazy.
“How often do we see a way better Sunday than we see him have on a Saturday? That was the same quite often, even way back when he first came into the sport working with us at McLaren."
Hamilton's final year with McLaren would come in 2012 before he joined Mercedes.
He would go on to win six driver's titles with the Silver Arrows before he joined Ferrari in 2025, ending the most successful partnership F1 has ever seen.
The now 40-year-old has had a hit-and-miss start to life with the Scuderia, finishing P10 at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix before winning his first Ferrari race in the Sprint at the Chinese Grand Prix a week later.
Hamilton finished P6 in the feature race before disaster struck as Ferrari suffered a double disqualification, with the Briton's car being found to have excessive wear on its skid block.
The next race will be at the Japanese Grand Prix, where Yuki Tsunoda has now been confirmed to have swapped with Liam Lawson to be Max Verstappen's new Red Bull team-mate.
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