Lewis
Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton was born in Stevenage on 7 January 1985. He started out in karting and in 1995 became the youngest driver to win the British cadet championship. In 1998 Ron Dennis brought him into the McLaren-Mercedes Young Driver Programme, and in 2000 he became European karting champion, with Nico Rosberg as his teammate. In junior single-seaters he won British Formula Renault in 2003, the Formula 3 Euro Series in 2005 and the GP2 Series for ART Grand Prix in 2006.

He made his Formula One debut with McLaren in 2007, becoming the first black driver to race in the sport. Alongside Fernando Alonso he won four races in his first season and finished runner-up to Kimi Räikkönen by a single point. In 2008 he took his first title in the Brazilian finale, passing Timo Glock on the final lap and finishing one point clear of Felipe Massa. He was the youngest champion to that date and the first British champion since Damon Hill in 1996. From 2009 to 2012 he finished fifth, fourth, fifth and fourth in the standings, and his 15-year association with McLaren then came to an end.

He joined Mercedes in 2013 as the replacement for the retiring Michael Schumacher and was reunited with Rosberg. His first win for the team came in Hungary that year. With the new turbo-hybrid engines he won 11 races and the title in 2014 in a duel with Rosberg, and defended it in 2015, clinching it at the United States Grand Prix with three races to go. In 2016 the title went to Rosberg by five points, and Rosberg retired soon afterwards. From 2017 to 2020 Hamilton won four championships in a row. His seventh title in 2020 equalled Schumacher's record, and in Portugal he took his 92nd win. He was knighted for services to motorsport.

In 2021 he became the first driver to reach 100 pole positions and 100 wins. He lost the title to Max Verstappen on the last lap of the Abu Dhabi finale. He went winless in 2022 and 2023, finishing sixth and third. In 2024 he won the British Grand Prix for the ninth time, added a win in Belgium and finished seventh. It was his last season with Mercedes.

In 2025 he moved to Ferrari as teammate to Charles Leclerc, replacing Carlos Sainz. He won his first sprint in China but was disqualified from the main race, and finished the championship in sixth. In 2026 he won the first Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, his first victory for Ferrari.

Source: Wikipedia, “Lewis Hamilton”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.