16-11-20, 17:45
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#11
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Join Date: Feb 2011
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re: Lewis Hamiltons’ Title Hopes Hit by Brazil Penalty & Investigation
Challenger, Champion, Change-Maker - The Real Lewis Hamilton Story
He is the most successful driver in the history of F1*, but how did he do it?
BBC SPORT 16 NOV 2020
Lewis Hamilton set the world on fire on his very first serious run in a Formula 1 car.
At Silverstone, in September 2006, a 21-year-old Hamilton was given an evaluation test by McLaren as the team pondered his promotion to F1 the following year.
McLaren’s then race driver Pedro de la Rosa was there as a benchmark. The engineers preparing the car knew Hamilton had talent - the team had been supporting his career for the past eight years - but they were expecting him, like most other drivers, to need time to adjust to the extreme demands of a grand prix car.
They were wrong. After a couple of familiarisation runs, Hamilton was given a set of new tyres, and immediately he was matching De la Rosa’s times.
“Just looking at the data for a couple of seconds,” De la Rosa recalls, “I realised we had a massive problem - me and all the other drivers on the grid.
“When I saw the strength of Lewis, I realised this guy is on a different level.”
The test team reported back to the factory that Hamilton was “incredible”, and before long his place in the team for 2007, as team-mate to double world champion Fernando Alonso, was confirmed. It was, says Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren’s chief executive officer at the time, “one of the easier decisions”.
Formula 1’s greatest debut season followed. Hamilton was unlucky not to win the title, but made amends a year later as one of the most dramatic finales in sporting history made him - at the time - the youngest ever F1 world champion.
Year after year, Hamilton has gone on producing moments that have been carved into F1 legend. Jaw-dropping qualifying laps and remarkable race drives continuing through the campaigns with McLaren and his later move to Mercedes, where he has not only dominated on track for the past seven years but become a global icon with a reach far beyond his sport. There have been a few controversies along the way, too.
According to many of those who have shared the journey with him, Hamilton is fair, generous, respectful, honest and honourable, but also ruthless, focused, self-obsessed and ultra-competitive; insular and intense but also warm and open.
And now, he is the most successful driver in the history of F1. He broke Michael Schumacher’s record of 91 wins last month, has equalled the German's record of seven world championships - and has every chance of adding an eighth next year.
THAT is how he did it....
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