Lewis Hamilton | Profile, Stats, Photos of World Champion Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton

Team: Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
F1 Debut: 2007 - Australian Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton took the drivers world championship in 2008 and is McLaren Mercedes number 1 driver.

He entered Formula 1 at the start of the 2007 season after McLaren cleared out its previous driver line up of Kimi Raikkonen, who went to Ferrari, and Juan Pablo Montoya went stateside to NASCAR.

McLaren also employed reigning world champion Fernando Alonso from Renault meaning 2007 was a fresh start from the British team.

In his first season, Lewis Hamilton was meant to be playing the part of the rookie, the man who was going to try and make it on the podium whilst he learnt the ropes of F1, and Fernando Alonso was the driver who was gunning for his third world championship in a row and to bring glory back to McLaren's door step. It couldn't have played out any more differently...

Lewis Hamilton qualified 4th in his first race at the Australian Grand Prix and made it to 3rd by the end of the race making him a podium visitor in only his first race. He would repeat this another 8 times in a row, stringing together seconds and thirds making him the overall championship leader throughout much of 2007.

His day of glory finally came when he won at the Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal where despite 4 safety car periods bunching up the pack behind him, he managed to pull out a lead each time and win in style. He then went on to win his second race only a week later at Indianapolis . The championship was under his control.

Midway through the 2007 season, tensions grew inside McLaren with Alonso not happy with Lewis Hamilton's challenge on his title bid and the Ferrari spy-gate scandal that surfaced in the summer seemingly took some of their focus away from the championship. Hamilton went on to lose the 2007 title in the final round, despite having a 17 point gap to Kimi Raikkonen with 2 races to go. He lost the drivers title in his rookie season by 1 point. Tough to swallow, but there was light ahead...

2008 was a much more successful year for Lewis Hamilton. He easily outpaced his new team mate Heikki Kovalainen for most of the season and despite some race ruining mistakes (crashing in the pit lane in Montreal most notably), he took the championship in the final round, at the final corner in Brazil, after overtaking Timo Glock for fifth position which was just enough to take the title from Felipe Massa who won the race that day. This year he won the title by 1 point.

Lewis Hamilton has often spoken of "the dream" him and his father, Anthony Hamilton, have had about winning the Formula 1 drivers title. The dream is now complete and Lewis Hamilton's only challenge left in Formula One is to become a multiple world champion like many of the greats such as Michael Schumacher, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and of course, his absolute hero: Ayrton Senna.

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