Sushil Kumar
i. I’m Lewis Hamilton. I won the British Championship and one day I want to be racing your cars,” the British youngster, then just nine years old and still in his early karting days, told Mclaren team principal Ron Dennis in 1994. “Phone me in nine years, we’ll sort something out then,” Dennis wrote in his autograph book in response.
Dennis didn’t wait for nine years for that call. Mclaren had signed Hamilton to its driver development programme by 199■.
Nine years after that, Hamilton made his Formula One debut for Mclaren, nishing on the podium in his very rst race and nearly winning the title that season — heading into the nal race of 2007, he led teammate Fernando Alonso, the twotime reigning world champion, by four points, but an average race in Sao Paulo saw Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen leapfrog both to win the World Drivers’ Championship.
After Hamilton became champion for the rst time in the next year, Michael Schumacher, then the holder of nearly every notable record in F1, told BBC Sport that the British driver could win seven titles, as the German legend had. “I would say, absolutely, yes,” said Schumacher, adding: “Nobody thought, even me, that I could beat (Juan Manuel) Fangio. Then I did. Records are there to be beaten.”
Continuing the theme of “when, not if” that has dened his career, Hamilton entered the coronavirusdelayed 2020 F1 season with the chance of matching Schumacher’s seven drivers’ titles. With ■4 race wins, he was also within striking distance of the German’s 91. But with a provisional eightrace calendar, it seemed unlikely Hamilton would take that record this year.
Now, three races into the 2020 season, Hamilton has added two wins to his tally, and F1 has added two races to the calendar and is in discussions for more, making the likelihood of Hamilton equalling the two most signicant F1 records this year that