Introduction
Last week we had a look at the career of the current number one in the drivers Championship: Max Verstappen. During the French Grand Prix, we saw an amazing battle between him and reigning World Champion Lewis Hamilton, who in the first lap, took over first place, but unfortunately saw Verstappen pass by in the penultimate lap, and therefore had to settle for second place. That’s also his current place in the championship standings, and after a relatively long, lonely reign, it might feel strange for the British driver. But he hasn’t always been number one, this excellent driver also started from the bottom and climbed his way up. Let’s have a look at the road he has taken to become one of the most successful drivers in Formula One.
Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton was born on January 7, 1985 in Stevenage, England. His father, Anthony Hamilton, is black, his mother, Carmen Larbalestier, is white, making Lewis mixed-race. He however has identified as black, and supports the black community very much.
Little Lewis didn't have an easy childhood. His parents divorced when he was only two years old, and his parents' attention mainly went to his younger brother Nicolas, who is handicapped by cerebral palsy.
When he was five, his father bought him a radio-controlled car, with which he immediately competed in national competitions, which he also won.
At the age of six, his father got him his first go-kart for Christmas, and promised to support his racing career as long as he worked hard at school. This would be the start of an amazing racing career.
Early Days
Hi. I'm Lewis Hamilton. I won the British Championship and one day I want to be racing your cars." - Lewis Hamilton (1995)
"Phone me in nine years, we'll sort something out then." - Ron Dennis (1995)
When he started karting, Lewis Hamilton immediately stood out. Not only because he was good - and he was - but because he did not look like any of the other kids he was racing.
Like many sports that require financial input or attract the wealthier members of society, motor racing was (and maybe still is) very undiverse. In that era, Formula 1 had never had a black driver. The Hamiltons were usually the only black people at races, and there was racial abuse, which really upset Lewis in the beginning - to a point that he felt the need to get revenge on everybody. He soon turned that frustration into motivation, getting his revenge on the track.
He soon started winning races, and only at the age of ten, Lewis became the youngest driver to win the British Cadet Karting Championship. That same year, in 1995, little Lewis attended the Autosport Awards, the motorsport industry’s end-of-season shindig. He walked up to Ron Dennis, the boss of McLaren at that moment, and said “Hi. I'm Lewis Hamilton. I won the British Championship and one day I want to be racing your cars." Dennis wrote in Hamilton's autograph book: "Phone me in nine years, we'll sort something out then."
Only three years later, after Hamilton had won his second British kart championship, Ron Dennis reached out and signed him up to McLaren’s driver development programme. The contract included the option of a future F1 seat.
Climbing Up The Ladder
“If we’re going to try to win the championship, we don’t need a kid in the car, we need someone experienced. I need a strong team-mate; we don’t need a rookie.” - Fernando Alonso (2007)
Hamilton was already a driver to be reckoned with in the entry-level classes. He won the UK Formula Renault Championship, dominated the European F3 in 2005, and had one of the most impressive seasons the GP2 championship (now known as Formula 2) has ever seen.
Partly because of this, Ron Dennis gave him the opportunity to join Formula 1 in 2007. The then 22-year-old Brit joined McLaren as a teammate of reigning world champion Fernando Alonso, who initially wasn’t very keen on having a rookie as his teammate. “Well, why are we doing that?” Fernando had said to his colleagues at McLaren. “If we’re going to try to win the championship, we don’t need a kid in the car, we need someone experienced. I need a strong team-mate; we don’t need a rookie.” But it turned out to be quite a different story.
Hamilton was very competitive from the start. He finished on the podium in his first nine races and won his first race in Canada. Ultimately, Hamilton would come out with four wins and twelve podiums in his first Formula 1 season. That wasn't enough for the title. Due to a series of mistakes in the last two races, Lewis was stuck at 109 points, the same as Alonso. Kimi Räikkonen, however, had 110, and took the title.
However, the tone was set and Lewis Hamilton had put his name out there. Throughout the 2007-season, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were involved in a number of incidents which resulted in a lot of tension between both drivers and within the team. This ended in Alonso and McLaren terminating their contract by mutual consent in November that year. Following a successful first season at McLaren, Hamilton signed a multi-million-pound contract to stay with the team until 2012.
In 2008, Hamilton learned from his mistakes and ended up on the highest place on the podium on 5 occasions, and had ten other podium finishes.
The championship, however, was only awarded in the last race of the season, the Brazilian Grand Prix. Due to a heavy rain shower in the last eight laps of the race, it seemed for a while that Hamilton again would let the championship slip from his hands. He was overtaken by Sebastian Vettel in the last two laps and was then in sixth place, which would put him at 97 points. Felipe Massa, who was running in first place, would also score a total of 97 with his extra ten points, but had more wins (Brazil would be his sixth), which would give him the championship.
When Massa crossed the finish line, Hamilton was still in sixth place. Massa and his team at Ferrari were already celebrating their win, but out on track, Timo Glock was struggling with his grip on his worn slick tyres. Hamilton was catching up, and passed Glock’s Toyota as it slithered out of the final corner. He crossed the line in fifth place, bringing his final score to 98 points, just one more than Felipe Massa. The celebrations abruptly stopped in the Ferrari pit, whereas at McLaren they went wild.
His remaining years at McLaren, however, weren’t that successful. Although he won at least one race every year, he was unable to really compete for the title.
The 2009-season started off badly. In Australia, Hamilton was removed from the results after he and the team made a false statement to the stewards about letting Jarno Trulli pass during a yellow flag situation. In the following three races, Hamilton did score championship points, but he underperformed dramatically in the subsequent races. It took until the end of July for Hamilton to take the podium for the first time; in Hungary he took first place. Four more pole positions and a win in Singapore followed. He also achieved a number of podium places and was the man of the second half of the season, but only finished fifth in the World Cup with just 49 points.
In 2010, he performed well and ended up scoring quite some points. This year again the championship was decided in the very last race, the Abu Dhabi GP. Along with Alonso, Vettel, and Webber - Lewis Hamilton still had a chance at the title. In the end, however, he did not win the championship, because he finished second in the race, behind new world champion Sebastian Vettel. In the final Championship standings Hamilton was fourth.
The 2011-season wasn’t a great one for Lewis. Early in the year, he split with then girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger. According to Matt Bishop, McLaren’s communication director, Lewis was very upset about the break-up.
The season itself started reasonably, with a second place in Australia, eight place in Malaysia, and a win in China. But after that it went downhill. He only finished on the podium four times, including winning the Grand Prix in Germany and Abu Dhabi. Hamilton finished fifth in the championship with 227 points. For the first time in his career, behind his teammate who at the time was Jenson Button, who had 270 points, with which he finished second.
With two pole positions and three third places in a row, Hamilton started the 2012-season pretty well. The first win came in the seventh race in Canada. Further victories followed in Hungary, Italy, and at the new Circuit of the Americas in the United States. Hamilton was also leading the races in Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and Brazil - among others, when he had to retire because of technical problems, and therefore being unable to score any points. He ended the season in fourth place.
A Golden Move
The lack of a second championship at McLaren got to Hamilton and he started looking for a move away. At the time, McLaren had a faster car, and Mercedes had struggled in the three years since they took over the title-winning Brawn team at the end of 2009. Few expected Hamilton to make the jump, but he did.
His move to Mercedes in 2013 turned out to be gold. Hamilton was reunited with his childhood karting teammate, Nico Rosberg. In his first season with the Silver Arrows, Hamilton secured a sole race victory, winning the Hungarian Grand Prix, where he converted an unexpected pole position into a winning margin of over 11 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Kimi Räikkönen. Alongside this, he achieved a number of podium finishes and pole positions, finishing fourth in the standings once again - the third time in five years.
After a building year in 2013, Mercedes started harvesting from 2014. The coming of F1’s hybrid engine regulations brought immediate success. The team won 16 of the 19 races, 11 of which were won by Lewis Hamilton, who prevailed in a season-long duel for the title against teammate Rosberg. Again, in the final race, the championship was decided. Lewis won the race and the championship, assigning a second World Championship to his name.
In 2015, he won his third title at a canter, dominating from the start and clinching the championship with three races to go.
Despite recording more pole positions and race wins than any other driver in 2016, Hamilton lost the drivers' title by five points to his teammate Nico Rosberg. The team's policy of letting the pair fight freely led to tension between the two drivers both on and off the track.
That season finished Rosberg off. It had taken so much effort, focus, and commitment to beat Hamilton to the championship - even with all the luck that had gone his way, using every trick he knew, on-track and off, psychological games, and more - that he decided he couldn’t face going through it again. Now that he had achieved a lifetime ambition, winning a championship, Rosberg decided to quit at the end of the season. He knew he wouldn’t beat Hamilton again. The question now was, who could?
Breaking Records
In the 2017-season, Hamilton came back stronger than ever. His driving has risen to a new level, maintaining the speed but now combining it to a new solidity and consistency. He was unstoppable, even if he did not have the best equipment. This season also saw a tense title fight between Hamilton and Vettel. The Brit registered 11 pole positions to his name. He took the record for the all-time most pole positions, and thanks to his consistency, he won nine races and secured his fourth world title with two races to spare.
Fight for Five was the name of the battle for the title in 2018. Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton, both four time championship winners, were battling for that fifth title in an intense fight. Half way through the season, Vettel was in the lead. However, Vettel had a number of driver and mechanical errors in the second half of the season, while Hamilton won six of the seven races in the second part, giving the Mercedes driver enough points to take home his fifth championship title. That year, he also set a new record for the most points scored in a season.
During the 2018-season, he renewed his contract with Mercedes for two years. It was reported to be worth up to £40 million per year, making him the best-paid Formula One driver in history.
The next year, Hamilton led the drivers' standings for the majority of the season, fending off title challenges from teammate Bottas, the Honda-powered Red Bull of Verstappen, and Ferrari's recently promoted Leclerc, to clinch his sixth drivers' crown at the 2019 United States Grand Prix with two races remaining. Lewis ended the season with 11 wins (matching his previous best in 2014 and 2018) and 17 podiums (matching the all-time record for a fourth time) as well as achieving 5 pole positions. His total of 413 points for the season was a new all-time record, seeing the Brit finish 87 points clear of second-placed Valtteri Bottas.
As we know, the 2020-season was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The season was shortened to only 17 races, of which Hamilton won 11. He equalled his previous personal best, but in fewer races (he only ran 16 races, because he contracted COVID-19 and was not able to race in the Sakhir GP - his first race absence since his debut in 2007).
These 11 wins also helped him to break Michael Schumacher’s records of 91 wins, bringing his total to 95 by the end of the 2020-season.
With still three rounds to go, Hamilton secured his seventh title during the Turkish Grand Prix, and ended the season 124 points clear of his team-mate, Bottas, who finished second in the standings.
2020 was also the year where the Black Lives Matter movement found global support returned to the headlines of the international press. Hamilton took the knee ahead of every race and wore t-shirts with the Black Lives Matter slogan. He was, and still is, very much fighting for equal rights, not only for the black community, but for everyone. He is using his reach as one of the most successful drivers to educate people and fight for a better world.
Back To The Present...
In the first week of February 2021, only a few weeks before the pre-season testing would start, it was confirmed that Lewis Hamilton would race another year for Mercedes. He started the season off great, with a win in the first race. However, from the first moment, it was clear that it might not be that easy for the now 36-year old Brit to take home his eighth title. From the first race on, Red Bull driver Max Verstappen, who is seen by many as a future World Champion, was putting a lot of pressure on Hamilton. The first two races already showed a great battle between the two.
This season, Hamilton did not stop breaking records. During the Spanish Grand Prix, he became the first driver ever in Formula One to reach 100 pole positions. And with 98 victories on his name, he’s also very close to reaching that magical 3 digit number as well.
With still 16 races to go this year, he has a good shot at getting there, but we also know that Max Verstappen is giving him a good fight and has already won some of the battles on track, so he won’t make it easy. The Dutchman is currently leading the championship, Hamilton only 12 points behind in second place.
We still have a lot of races to go, so lots of things can happen, but will the Styrian Grand Prix, one of the two races that are held in Austria this year, close the gap between Verstappen and Hamilton, and bring the Brit a step closer to 100 victories in Formula One and an eighth Championship title? We will know this Sunday…
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