How Lewis Hamilton went beyond being a Formula One star
In sports, some players become well-known and influential well beyond the boundaries of a particular league or championship. In Formula One, no other driver has quite reached that level as Lewis Hamilton has.
He won seven driver’s championships, which made him one of Britain’s biggest sports stars of all time. But outside of racing, Hamilton swiftly became one of the most well-known people in F1.
He was a famous person long before Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” made most of the F1 drivers famous. He used his fame to support causes that had little to do with sports.
He is so well-known that his surprise move to Ferrari for the upcoming 2025 season was one of the largest stories in recent sports history.
When it comes to star power, Hamilton’s racing for F1’s most successful, famous, and mythical brand makes for a powerful mix.
Hamilton has had a very successful F1 career, and Ferrari will be the third and final team he drives for. That one might be one of those that makes him an even bigger star.
The Briton won’t be short on cash after he crosses the border, either. Both people have been “flirting” “for a while,” and rumors about this have been going on for a long time.
The news source says Hamilton will make over Charles Leclerc’s incredible £40 million a year salary. The 39-year-old is currently paid £50 million a year.
Hamilton has also driven scarlet road cars off the front lawn at their Beverly Hills dealership and to the team’s factory within Maranello. Some fans don’t agree with Ferrari’s choice to sign Hamilton.
He was born on January 7, 1985, in Britain, and is a race car driver. He is now a famous British race car driver, and his fans are looking for Lewis Hamilton’s religion.
A lot of famous people are religious, but a few of them won’t talk about their religion in public.
In 1995, Hamilton, who was getting better at go-karting at the time, went up to Ron Dennis, who had been the boss of McLaren for a long time, at an awards dinner.
The ten-year-old wanted to trade contact information with Dennis and told him straight out that he wanted to take the wheel for him in Formula One one day.
It was the beginning of a friendship that eventually brought Hamilton to F1. He worked his way up through the junior ranks with help from McLaren and won the GP2 (now Formula Two) title in 2006.
In 2007, Hamilton got a seat in an F1 race because McLaren liked him enough. This was a huge risk to a 22-year-old rookie.
He was F1’s youngest champion at age 23 and looked like he was going to keep setting records. People in Britain enjoyed a new sports hero to cheer for.
Hamilton quickly explained why the choice was right. On his first race, he finished third, making a daring move on Fernando Alonso, the defending champion and new teammate, at the very first corner.
He won the sixth race and came in just one point short of becoming F1’s first champion. During a season full of controversy and growing tension in Alonso, Hamilton became a star.
His first-class championship came the next year. He beat Felipe Massa by one point at the last curve of the last lap for the last race in Brazil to win the title.
However, things stopped, and Hamilton didn’t try hard enough. McLaren kept making cars that weren’t fast enough, which took away his best chance at another championship while Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel as well as Red Bull took over.
What Hamilton saw made him feel good. That’s when Mercedes called. When Hamilton started to get into more off-track activities and problems with the team got worse, he felt stifled.
Many people didn’t believe Hamilton’s decision to leave McLaren to Mercedes in 2013. Mercedes had won one grand prix before he got there.
The team was still building over the future, but they knew that the Briton would be very important to their success in the future.
It turned out to be the choice that has shaped his career so far. With the best engine for the new F1 rules that came out in 2014, Mercedes became the best team.
Hamilton won the titles in 2014 and 2015, beating out teammate Nico Rosberg. Rosberg won his first title in 2016 and quit Formula One right away, having reached his ultimate goal of becoming world champion.