Lewis Hamilton has made history. Now a seven-time Formula One world champion and cementing himself as the greatest ever racing driver.
Upon winning the race on Sunday, Hamilton was overcome with emotion and said over the radio through tears, to his engineers but to the wider world too, “That’s for all the kids out there who dream the impossible. You can do it too, man! I believe in you guys.”
Hamilton’s rise through motorsport is incredible because such a story is so rare. He is F1’s first and only Black world driver let alone champion in its 70-year history and also he is a racing great from a humble background.
“It is no secret that I have walked this sport alone as the only person of color here,” he told reporters after record-equaling feat on Sunday. “You can create your own path and that is what I have been able to do, and it has been so tough. Tough doesn’t even describe how hard it has been.”
Lewis has also become a leading light in the BLM movement by being willing to be vocal about the racism in motor sport and wider society.
In 2015, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff estimated that to traverse the many levels of motorsport — from entry level karting, to Formula Renault, onto Formula 3, GP2 and then to F1 — it would cost a driver £7 million Five years later, it seems fair to assume that that figure will only have increased.
PA media’s F1 correspondent Phil Duncan believes the sport is fortunate to have had even one champion of the caliber of Hamilton.
“It’s almost incredible that we’ve actually had one [Lewis Hamilton] in the first place, really.”
“He got there because he was good, but in a way [he is] fortunate that he was picked up by McLaren and Mercedes at 13, who were then effectively able to bankroll his future career.”
Prior to being signed to McLaren by Ron Dennis, Hamilton’s father Anthony famously remortgaged his house three-times and, at times, held four jobs to fund his son’s karting career. But unless a driver’s parents’ house is valued at a few million dollars, that may not be a possible route nowadays.
In 2019, Hamilton lamented the lack of working-class drivers making it to the grid, saying: “There are very few, if working-class families on their way up. It’s all wealthy families.
“I’ve got a friend of mine who was nearly in Formula One and then he got leapfrogged by a wealthy kid and then his opportunity was gone.”
Well Lewis has made us all proud and shown anything even becoming the best in an elitist sport is possible.
