Former Formula 1 World Champion Jackie Stewart has urged Lewis Hamilton to improve his mentality to avoid further collisions on the race track.

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As has been much discussed, Hamilton has had a series of controversial incidents this year to sum up what has been an extremely frustrating few months for him.

The latest came against Felipe Massa in Japan, a battle that caused plenty of controversey at the previous race in Singapore.

Stewart believes that a lot of Hamilton’s issues are to do with his mindset and that he needs to sort these out before he can be a consistently successful Formula 1 driver.

He said: “God gives you huge amounts of natural talent, whoever it may be, whether it be a Wayne Rooney, a Muhammad Ali, a Pele, or whether it was the great Fango or Jim Clark, but there has got to be mental management.”

“The mind management is sometimes more important because everyone has been given a gift of God in natural ability when they get to Formula One.

“But to keep your head together, not to be intoxicated by everything else that goes around, now Jenson Button has got that quality and so also has Sebastian Vettel and a little bit of Lewis’ problems is he hasn’t had that same, solid down to earth control.”

“He has had more collisions than any other major driver I know in the history of motor sport. That has got to stop. You can’t keep having collisions.”

“None of the great drivers ever did that. Lewis has got to recalibrate and sometimes because he is so very fast there is errors of judgement made so you have got off back off a little bit and drive within the capabilities of both you and the car and the other people around you.”

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