Motorcycling-Seven times champion Bristow feels Hamilton's hurt and hunger

By Alan Baldwin

LONDON (Reuters) - As a seven times world champion chasing an eighth title after losing out in the final round of last season, Emma Bristow knows something of the hurt and hunger felt by fellow Briton Lewis Hamilton.

The motorcycle trials rider may be an unfamiliar face to Formula One's most successful driver, and indeed to most of her compatriots, but she is as hungry to win on two wheels as the Mercedes great on four.

"To not win last year, it hurts," the 31-year-old told Reuters on a visit to London to collect the Torrens Trophy awarded to her by the Royal Automobile Club in 2020 for outstanding skill in international motorcycling.

Bristow, who watched Formula One's controversial Abu Dhabi season-ender last December with her heart racing, said she was determined to come back from her own dark place stronger mentally and physically.

The first woman to win the Torrens trophy, and the first trials rider to be honoured, she rode her Sherco Factory Racing bike up the stairs of the exclusive Pall Mall private members' club and around the plushly carpeted central rotunda.

In 2020, Mercedes driver Hamilton had celebrated his seventh F1 title and Bristow won her seventh successive women's FIM Trial World Championship with six wins in six starts.

Last season it was Spain's Queen of Trials Laia Sanz, a Dakar Rally and Extreme E competitor, who returned to take a 14th title in a battle with Bristow that went down to the wire in Portugal.

Hamilton's bid for a record eighth ended when now-replaced race director Michel Masi changed the safety car procedure in a move that opened the way for Red Bull's Max Verstappen to become champion.

Bristow, also a double world SuperEnduro women's champion and 10 times British