Lewis Hamilton, by winning his fourth world championship, one more than Sir Jackie Stewart, has established himself as the greatest British racing driver of all time. Such a sweeping claim will always be open to dispute and to inspection in different lights but the only light that really counts is the one that shines on the bare statistics.
Hamilton’s latest milestone – and he is only 32, so his journey is far from over – marks his arrival at the pinnacle of a line of British heroes that began between the wars with Sir Henry Segrave and Richard Seaman and continued with the holders of the official world title inaugurated in 1950: Mike Hawthorn, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, John Surtees, Stewart, James Hunt, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Jenson Button. His achievement takes him beyond the arguments even of the romantics who venerate the two great British virtuosos of grand prix history: Clark, a double champion so tragically unlucky to be cut down at the age Hamilton is today, and Sir Stirling Moss, the greatest driver never to win the championship.
World titles
7 Michael Schumacher (Germany)
5 Juan Manuel Fangio (Argentina)
4 Lewis Hamilton (GB)
4 Alain Prost (France)
4 Sebastian Vettel (Germany)
3 Jack Brabham (Australia)
3 Jackie Stewart (GB)
3 Niki Lauda (Austria)
3 Nelson Piquet (Brazil)
3 Ayrton Senna (Brazil)
Pole positions
1st Lewis Hamilton 72 (2nd Schumacher 68)
Race wins
1st Michael Schumacher 91 (2nd Hamilton 62)
Percentage wins
1st Juan Manuel Fangio 46.15% (6th Hamilton 30.24%)
Podium finishes
1st Michael Schumacher 155 (2nd Hamilton 116)
Fastest laps
1st Michael Schumacher 77 (4th Hamilton 38)
Consecutive starts
1st Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg 206
To them that suggestion will represent sacrilege but Hamilton, too, is a virtuoso. The speed, skill, precision and racecraft that have brought him 62 race wins are all the proof he needs, supported by the 72 pole positions that place him first in the all-time list ahead of Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher.
Formula One remains the apogee of motor sport and the man from Stevenage lies behind only Schumacher, the seven-times champion, and Juan Manuel Fangio, who won five titles in the 1950s. Hamilton’s fourth championship takes him clear of Sir Jack Brabham, Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet, Senna and Stewart, all three-times winners, and level with Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel.
These names indicate not just the exalted company in which he belongs but the scale of his achievement since he took the wheel of a go-kart at the age of six and showed a natural gift that persuaded his father to make untold sacrifices in order to lay the foundations of the boy’s career. In that respect Anthony Hamilton rivals Judy Murray as Britain’s most remarkable sporting parent.
Hamilton has two traits in particular that mark him out as one of the greats. First, he is brilliant on a wet track, in conditions where tyre adhesion and visibility are drastically reduced, as he showed in the British Grand Prix at a rain-soaked Silverstone in 2008, his first championship year. Second, he is capable of controlling a grand prix weekend from start to finish, capturing pole position before winning the race unchallenged.
To achieve the kind of dominance that is evident on his best days Hamilton required a third and equally vital talent: the instinct for joining the right team at the right time. The first big decision of his life came at the age of 10 when he went up to Ron Dennis, the head of McLaren, at a prize-giving ceremony and announced his intention to drive for the team one day. A dozen years later he made his grand prix debut in one of Dennis’s cars. A year after that they would win the world title together.
In 2013 came his unexpected decision to leave McLaren, where he had been so carefully nurtured, to join a Mercedes team whose results, since returning to F1 three years earlier, had been underwhelming. Approached by Lauda and Ross Brawn, Hamilton formed a judgment that his existing team had stopped making progress and that the Mercedes would soon be a winning proposition. Proved right on both counts, he was rewarded with a second, a third and now a fourth world title.
And yet, inside and outside motor racing, the mention of his name often attracts a negative response. Those who revere his talent are matched, perhaps even outnumbered, by those who do not warm to his unwillingness to fit the long-established template – loosely based on the suave European playboy of the 1950s – of the successful Formula One driver.
A mixed-race man who emerged from an unfashionable new town with no advantages except his phenomenal talent and his father’s ambition, Hamilton brought with him an interest in a different sort of culture, symbolised by his diamond ear-studs and a fondness for the company of celebrities from the world of hip-hop. Once he had become famous, his friendship with such as Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and Pharrell Williams, and his interest in trying his own hand at making their kind of music, attracted a new public to the sport. It also set him apart from the rest of the Formula One paddock and sometimes made observers question his commitment to the job that had brought him success.
His relationships with his team-mates – particularly Fernando Alonso and Nico Rosberg – have sometimes been fractious. His behaviour in the green room, where the top three finishers in each race go to wipe off the sweat before mounting the podium, often emphasises an apparent distance between him and his rivals. He seems to need more time to compose himself and his efforts at small talk with his rivals appear strained.
Unusually for a top Formula One driver, fluctuations in his personal life have affected his competitive performance. He had a bad year in 2011, when he cut his professional ties with his father in order to join the celebrity-studded client list of Simon Fuller’s XIX Management. Turbulence in his private life seemed to be mirrored on the track, where he collided with the Ferrari of Felipe Massa no fewer than six times during the season, leading to a public confrontation between the two drivers and criticism from those, including Moss and Stewart, who had previously been lavish in their praise.
He emerged from the slump even stronger, although he has always had to face grumbles about his decision to live in Monaco from those who prefer to ignore the fact many other British F1 heroes, including Clark, Stewart and Button, moved out of the UK to more tax-friendly territories without attracting similar criticism.
Given Hamilton is the only driver in the history of F1 to have endured insults as a consequence of his skin colour, it should not be a surprise his guard is often up. When he chooses to lower it, glimpses of spontaneity, warmth and generosity give a more accurate impression of the real man. And after this latest triumph, any doubts about his pre-eminence are now worth less than the exhaust smoke from his turbocharged engine.
