Ethnicity:
Hamilton's mother is white British, while his father is black British. However, Lewis self-identifies as black.
Lewis Hamilton was born on January 7, 1985, in Stevenage, England, and grew up in Tewin Wood in Hertfordshire. He is the son of Anthony Hamilton, who had emigrated from Grenada in the Caribbean as a child, and Carmen Lockhart.
Named after United States sprinter and Olympian Carl Lewis, Hamilton was raised in the home of his mother following his parents' divorce two years after he was born. His father, Anthony Hamilton, whose family had immigrated to England from Grenada, remained active in Hamilton's life and was the first to notice Hamilton's potential as a driver. After giving Hamilton a remote-controlled car, the elder Hamilton was determined to encourage the young driver's developing skills. When Hamilton was nine, already a cart champion, he moved in with his father and stepmother.
Hamilton's father encouraged him to begin go-karting when he was only six years old. In order to support Hamilton's growing commitment to the hobby, the elder Hamilton worked three jobs, buying his son a go-kart and helping him to enter in races.
At the age of ten, Hamilton won the British Junior Kart Championship, and many other successes followed. It was while being presented with a trophy for one of his wins in 1994 that he met McLaren's head, Ron Dennis. Two years later, McLaren began sponsoring Hamilton's races, providing advice and training to the young driver.
Hamilton won four additional British karting championships in 1996 and 1997. The following year, when he was only thirteen years old, Dennis signed him to a long-term contract with the McLaren Driver Development Support program. The contract guaranteed Hamilton financial and technical support and a future option if he made it to Formula One racing, making him the youngest driver ever to secure an F1 contract and enabling his father to stop moonlighting. McLaren's financial support allowed Hamilton to race throughout Europe. He won numerous European and world karting titles and in 2000, at the age of fifteen, he became the youngest-ever Formula A Karting World Champion.
Lewis Hamilton was educated at The John Henry Newman School. In February 2001, he began studies at Cambridge Arts and Sciences (CATS).
In 2001, Hamilton began his auto racing career in the British Formula Renault Winter Series, finishing fifth overall. The following year, he finished third. Hamilton progressed to car racing and, in 2003, he captured the British Formula Renault race series championship by winning 10 of the 15 races he entered. The following year, he competed in the Formula Three Euroseries championship. He won the championship in 2005 and, in 2006, he joined a team competing in GP2 (Grand Prix 2) - a race series designed to help drivers prepare for F1 - and won the GP2 title in his one season in the series.
At his 2007 Grand Prix debut in Australia, Hamilton finished third. He finished second in the next four races in Malaysia, Bahrain, Spain, and Monaco. In Barcelona, Spain, he became the youngest driver in F1 history in line for the championship, breaking the record set by his team's founder, Bruce McLaren, in 1960. At the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal on June 10, 2007, Hamilton led throughout the race, skillfully avoiding nearby crashes. It was the first time in history that a black driver won a major auto race. The following week, Hamilton won the United States Grand Prix in Indianapolis and took the lead in the F1 standings. With additional victories in Japan and Hungary and despite tire problems at the China Grand Prix, Hamilton was in the lead for the World Drivers' Championship up until the last race of the season. In the final race, however, in October in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Hamilton came in seventh due to a gear shifting problem in the eighth lap.
Hamilton's success continued in 2008. He amassed five victories and ten podium finishes. Hamilton won his first title on the last corner of the last lap in the last race of the season, becoming the then-youngest Formula One World Champion in history.
In his last four years with McLaren, Hamilton continued to score podium finishes and race victories, but a culmination of less competitive machinery and a self-confessed loss of focus saw him fail to finish higher than fourth in the drivers' standings. Hamilton entered the final round of the 2010 season with a chance of winning the title but ultimately finished fourth.
In September 2012, Hamilton decided to leave McLaren to join the Mercedes-Benz F1 team. He had some difficulty adjusting in his first season with Mercedes-Benz, winning just one race in 2013, but Hamilton nevertheless managed to rack up enough points to finish in the top five of the drivers' championship standings for the seventh consecutive season.
Hamilton dominated the F1 season in 2014, winning a career-high 11 races to capture his second drivers' championship. He was just as dominant in 2015 when he won his third drivers' championship one month before the season ended. In both seasons Hamilton's performance, combined with that of teammate Nico Rosberg, enabled Mercedes-Benz to win the F1 constructor's championship. Rosberg and Mercedes-Benz took their respective titles in 2016, with Hamilton finishing second in the drivers' standings behind his teammate. The following year Hamilton won nine races en route to his fourth drivers' championship. He won another drivers' championship in 2018, bringing his career tally to five and tying Juan Manuel Fangio for the second-highest championship total in F1 history. The following year, Hamilton claimed his sixth drivers' championship, placing him one title behind Michael Schumacher.
As of the tenth round of the 2020 season, Hamilton leads the drivers' standings by 44 points over Valtteri Bottas, with wins at the Styrian, Hungarian, British, Spanish, Belgian, and Tuscan Grands Prix.
Lewis Hamilton features on Christina Aguilera's 2018 song "Pipe" under the pseudonym 'XNDA'. He made a guest appearance in the film Cars 2 in which he voices an anthropomorphic version of himself. Lewis also voiced a voice command assistant in Cars 3 used by Cruz Ramirez. Hamilton is credited as an executive producer for the 2018 documentary film The Game Changers.
In 2018, Lewis launched a clothing line, TOMMYXLEWIS, during New York Fashion Week with American fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger.
In 2020, Hamilton had established The Hamilton Commission with the Royal Academy of Engineering. In the same year, he was listed as one of a group of high-profile investors who purchased W magazine.
Lewis Hamilton is one of the most successful drivers in the history of the sport. His six World Championship titles are the second-most of all time, as is his tally of 90 race victories. He also holds the records for the all-time most career points (3636), the all-time most pole positions (96), the all-time most podium finishes (159), the most grand slams in a season (3) and the most points in a season (413).
Lewis holds numerous awards, among which are the DHL Fastest Lap Award, the Pirelli Pole Position Award, the Hawthorn Memorial Trophy, the Bambi Award, the Autosport International Racing Driver Award, and others.
Hamilton was listed in the 2020 issue of Time as one of the 100 most influential people globally. He is also a Member of the Order of the British Empire and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
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2011Hamilton was raised as a Roman Catholic. He has always been open about his Christian faith and believes it plays a major role in his life and his racing.
Hamilton is mostly non-political but is dragged into discussions and controversies over race.
In January 2020, Hamilton pledged to donate US$500,000 to a variety of causes relating to the ongoing bushfire crisis in Australia.
Hamilton has been targeted by racist abuse throughout his career and has been outspoken in his criticism of racial politics in Formula One as well as advocating for greater diversity in the sport.
Quotations:
"My saying is; We win and lose together. I think that really does apply to both my fans, family and the team."
"Obviously I am not happy but they can throw what they want at me, I will come back stronger."
"What people tend to forget is the journey that I had getting to Formula One. There were plenty of years where I had to learn about losing and having bad races."
"I'm an extremist so I'm either hated or loved. I think it's down to when I first got to Formula One not always knowing what I was saying, saying things that mean one thing but people were taking the other way and then people don't forget."
"I don't aspire to be like other drivers - I aspire to be unique in my own way."
"It is actually quite exciting when you're flying headfirst into a barrier - the initial part, the initial part is actually quite fun, especially when you hit the gravel trap and you get some air, and then you see it coming and you think 'erk - it's gonna hurt!"
"In racing, there are always things you can learn, every single day. There is always space for improvement, and I think that applies to everything in life."
"I always remind myself if I'm having a down day because of a bad race it's not just me. That feeling I'm having is shared by my family, the team and my fans. When we win they feel the joy as well. That's why I say we win and lose together, and I definitely couldn't do it without them."
"You just need to be accepted for who you are and be proud of who you are and that is what I'm trying to do."
"Nothing can really prepare you for when you get in the Formula One car. Knowing that you're driving a multimillion-dollar car, and if you crash it, it's going to cost a lot of money, and they might not give you another chance, is scary."
Lewis Hamilton is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Hamilton is a vegan. He said: "... as the human race, what we are doing to the world... the pollution (in terms of emissions of global-warming gases) coming from the amount of cows that are being produced is incredible. The cruelty is horrible and I don't necessarily want to support that and I want to live a healthier life." Lewis also gave up drinking.
Physical Characteristics: Hamilton is 5 ft 7 ½ (171.5 cm) tall and weighs about 165 pounds (75kg).
In November 2007, Hamilton started dating Nicole Scherzinger. The couple split up and reunited numerous times, before finally splitting up in February 2015.
(born 1956)
Anthony Hamilton is a Grenada-born British racing-car manager.
(born 1955)
(born June 29, 1978)
Nicole Scherzinger is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and television personality.
(born June 27, 1985)
Nico Rosberg is a German-Finnish former racing driver who won the 2016 Formula One World Championship driving for Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport.
