Lewis Hamilton: The child prodigy

Lewis Hamilton very confidently and after dominating the entire season, won his third championship last night at such a brilliant US Grand Prix. The triple world champion became the first Briton to successfully defend his title and now joins the likes of Senna, Lauda, Stewart amongst others in the history books.

While the season of 2015, was pretty smooth for him, his journey into the sport wasn’t as easy as people might think.

Lewis started racing at a mere age of 6. His first racing experience was racing remote controlled cars when his father brought him one in 1991. The following year, he came second in the British Radio Car Association Championship (BRCA). His father brought him his first go kart as a mere Christmas present at the age of six. Although his father was supportive of his racing career, supporting his son was very problematic for him, considering time and financial issues.

Watch this video of an innocent Lewis talking about his dreams of wanting to drive in a Formula One car:

The struggles continued but at just the age of eight years, Lewis got a chance to race karts in the Rye House Kart Circuit, soon winning races. At the age of ten he approached McLaren F1 team boss Ron Dennis for an autograph, and told him, “Hi. I’m Lewis Hamilton. I won the British Championship and one day I want to be racing your cars.” Dennis wrote in his autograph book, “Phone me in nine years, we’ll sort something out then.”

12 years later since his encounter with Ron Dennis, he made his Formula One debut. His team? McLaren! In doing so, he became the first black man to become a Formula One driver.The following year he came second in the World Championship, finishing just one point short of the then World Champion- Kimi Raikkonen. The next year, he won the championship in perhaps one of the most exciting ways. By doing so, he became the youngest Formula One World Champion, a record that Sebastian Vettel later broke in 2010.

After his Championship in 2008, Lewis Hamilton stayed in McLaren till 2013 with strong performance and race victories each year. He joined Mercedes after that, and the rest as they say is history.

“He’s a quality driver, very strong and only 16. If he keeps this up I’m sure he will reach F1. It’s something special to see a kid of his age out on the circuit. He’s clearly got the right racing mentality.”

Michael Schumacher, speaking about Hamilton in 2001, when they competed together in karting.