Stuttgart - The breath of 40 000 worshipping Germans hung in the winter air. As did the plumes of purple-tinged grey smoke from Lewis Hamilton’s wheel-screeching, crowd-pleasing F1 car.
The world champion was in Mercedes’s heartland yesterday, a smile almost permanently worn wide. It was a night-and-day contrast to the taut bundle of tension he represented on the eve of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, where he won a second world title with a quicksilver start that belied his nerves.
This event, Stars & Cars, was the stage for Mercedes to share his success, and their world constructors’ title, with the fans - the best in the world, as Hamilton describes them.
Never mind that he is British, Hamilton was given a warm reception. Which is more than he got in some quarters back ‘home’ for waving the Union Flag in the air while living abroad to save on his tax bill.
WHERE IS HOME FOR HAMILTON?
So will he leave his haven in Monaco and return to Britain and the clutches of Her Majesty’s revenue raisers? “No,” he said, pointing to a happy lifestyle split mostly between the Mediterranean and America, the home of his pop-star girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger.
“I always go to the States in the winter. It’s my favourite place, where I have my house. I’ll get back to Monaco and then I’ll spend some time in the UK. I’ll go and see my mum.
“In Monaco, I wake up with quite a nice view. It’s generally beautiful weather when I wake up and I like being by the sea.
“But, of course, I was born in Britain, so it’s always like going home. You’re going back to where you started.”
The issue of nationality is a hot topic in Hamilton’s next title assault - on the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Hamilton’s chief rival for that honour is golf’s Rory McIlroy, the winner of two majors this season and a star of the Ryder Cup.
Is living in your second tax exile - Monaco after Switzerland - preferable in the public’s estimation to having cast yourself away to Ireland for the next Olympics, as McIlroy has done? The Beeb vote on December 16 will give us some clue.
ROSBERG A TRUE NATIONAL HYBRID
Next to Hamilton was his team-mate and a true national hybrid: Nico Rosberg, who was born to a Finnish father and a German mother and is domiciled in Monaco. He speaks five languages, supports Bayern Munich and competed for Finland before switching allegiance to Germany, probably for commercial reasons.
The two were more outwardly friendly than in recent months. “We were filming the other day and all the tension from the season disappeared. We can go back to being two normal individuals, talking about things that guys talk about,” said Hamilton.
Can we be so sure? This may be no more than a passing thaw. Rosberg, for all his bonhomie, must have hated moments of this party and will have revenge on his mind.
“I have no regrets,” he said of a season that reached its controversial peak when he and Hamilton crashed. “But there are a few things I would do differently. That is natural. It is often in difficult circumstances that we learn the most.”
The parade and interviews in and around the Mercedes museum was as German as Bratwurst. But there were reminders of the English connection. Not least in the form of Sir Stirling Moss, who drove the museum’s Mona Lisa, a silver 300 SLR. As plain Mr Moss he drove this car along 1600km of open Italian road in 10 hours 7mins 48sec at an average speed of 159.25km/h to win the Mille Miglia in 1955 - when Mercedes produced its last F1 world champion, Juan Manuel Fangio.
The laps of honour also continue for Hamilton. He will drive his Mercedes F1 W05 Hybrid on to the FIA Gala stage in Doha on Friday to collect the champion’s trophy. He is also finalising an appearance at the Autosport Awards, when he is favourite for the international driver of the year prize, and will be at the British Racing Drivers’ Club lunch.
Regardless of whether he wins the BBC gong, Stevenage’s most famous Monaco resident will collect plenty more silverware before Christmas.
Mail On Sunday