Mercedes superstar Lewis Hamilton has lifted the lid on the woman behind his Formula 1 dominance. Hamilton has been an unstoppable force on the Formula 1 gird, having won five of the past six championships. He is well on track to record a record-equalling seventh drivers championship in 2020, as he currently holds an 85 point lead over teammate Vallteri Bottas with four races remaining.
Hamilton has won the past three races and four of the past five as he extends his lead out and edges closer to Michael Schumacher’s seven F1 drivers championship victories. But behind the unbelievable success Hamilton has enjoyed, is one woman who is always by his side over the course of a race weekend. Angela Cullen has become a staple around the Formula 1 paddock with the physiotherapist never far from Hamilton’s side.
The British superstar described their partnership as “one of the greatest things that’s happened in my life”. “People for sure won’t understand it, naturally, because they see it from a distance, but she has been one of the greatest things that’s happened to me in my life,” Hamilton said in an interview with F1.com. “I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of people … and she’s the single hardest-working woman that I get to be around.
“She’s focused, selfless, and she makes my weekends peaceful,” Hamilton added. “Every day I wake up, whatever time it is, she’s just positive – never a single day has she been negative, so that’s very, very important. “I think it’s important in life to put positive people around you. You can’t be going around with deadweights, you can’t be going around with people who don’t inspire you to be better and lift you up when you’re down.
You need to be around people who can do that for you, and she’s one of them.” Hamilton following the Portuguese Grand Prix called out some other trainers in the paddock, explaining they’re not real physiotherapists like Angela is. Max Verstappen backed up Hamilton’s remark about Angela being a real physio, but he won’t be going back anytime soon. “Angela is a real physio.
A lot of trainers here claim they are real physios but they are not; most of them aren’t physios. Angela’s got …” Hamilton said. Verstappen chimed in: “She’s got strong hands. She’s quite … she treated me once, it was not so lovely. Well, it was good but not so very enjoyable initially.” A post shared by Lewis Hamilton (@lewishamilton) on Oct 26, 2020 at 11:20am PDT
Hamilton expanded on what Cullen brings and said her role as an actual physiotherapist gives him an edge over his rivals. “When you come into Formula 1, there’s this whole idea of physios, but a lot of them, or some of them, are just trainers,” said Hamilton. “They still take on the title of ‘physio’ – but a physio is a physiotherapist, and for years, I’d always had a male trainer, but I noticed that I was always having different problems.
I’d have, like, muscle tightness in my neck, or I’d have problems with my lower back, or glute, whatever it might be, and my trainer could never fix it. “So you’d have to just deal with it through the weekend and I was like ‘this doesn’t make sense, I don’t need to train on the weekends’. So I was like ‘I need to find a physio’. “Angela had done a bit of work on me back home, so I spoke to her and asked her ‘would you like to come on the road with me?’ and little did I know we would have the greatest partnership.”
