Bruno Michel has revealed that Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore asked him to check Lewis Hamilton’s GP2 car following the Briton’s comeback win at the 2006 Turkish GP. The Frenchman was impressed with the champion’s performance, but two well-known figures in the paddock believed his GP2 car was not legal.
Turkey 2006 is considered Hamilton’s best performance in GP2. The Briton dropped to the back of the grid after the first lap and then overtook all but one of his rivals to finish in a creditable second place. After the race, Michel recalls that Briatore and Ecclestone asked him to check the equality of his ART, as they did not believe that a driver could do something like that.
“With Lewis it was very interesting. He came as a rookie in GP2 and I had the feeling that he was very strong, probably a special pilot“But he struggled to have a perfect weekend. Sometimes he wasn’t doing well in qualifying, he was making mistakes in the race, but we realised that when he was ready, he was going to be really impressive,” Michel said on the official Formula 1 podcast, Beyond The Grid.
“I remember the race in Türkiye in 2006“It was incredible. He was at the front, he spun and when he came back on track he was seventeenth and he overtook everyone, he was on another planet in that race. The funny thing was that after that race, Bernie and Flavio called me and told me to check that car, it wasn’t possible, the team was cheating, that it wasn’t possible. I was going to check the car, but I told them that that driver was very special,” he adds.
As Hamilton did in his GP2 career, Michel underlines the immense value and talent that a driver who wins Formula 2 in his debut season possesses. In addition to Lewis, three other great young talents on the current grid have done so and these three needed relatively little to make their mark in the Grand Prix.
“The last one to make the climb was Piastri. He won Formula 3 as a rookie, won Formula 2 as a rookie and then had a year of preparation with Alpine which was a bit complicated, but Oscar was ready. Before him we had George, Charles, I can’t say they had a quick rise. They won Formula 2 as rookies and that means something“All Formula 1 teams have to keep an eye on them,” Michel concluded.
