Mature Hamilton is at ease with himself and takes the rough with the smooth
LEWIS HAMILTON is criticised for his clothes, his taste in music and many other things but the man who was once Formula One’s wonderkid is 31 and he has relaxed into the prime of his life.
He talks like a man who has embraced his maturity. He seems like a man at ease with himself. After years of acceding to the protection of his father, Anthony, or to the mania for control of his former team, McLaren, he is allowing himself to be the man he wants to be. The time for acting the way others wanted him to act has passed.
Hamilton’s transformation from being a shy, bullied kid who struggled at school into a confident, self-possessed man acknowledged by many as Britain’s greatest active sportsman is one of the most inspiring stories in modern sport.
Hamilton (pictured) smiles when he thinks about it. His closest friends are still the friends he made at school. So when people say he has forgotten his roots, that is not true, either. Even when he dedicated his victory at the Canadian Grand Prix to the late Muhammad Ali earlier this month, he was thinking about the way he once was.
‘Ali was the greatest sportsman of all time in terms of the aura that he had and what he stood for and what he was,’ says Hamilton. ‘The way he would go in and say: “I’m going to whoop your ass” and then he would go in and do it, that was amazing. I always wanted to have that.
‘I was pushed around and bullied at school. For young kids, it’s like a plant blossoming: if you keep it in the shade, it doesn’t grow as much. I saw Ali and I always wanted to have that confidence.
‘The time when I opened up and blossomed was delayed. I wasn’t going out with my friends on the weekends. I was karting.
‘Some people never fully blossom and come out of the little pocket they’ve created, the comfortable corner they’ve created.
‘What I’m doing now isn’t about having my youth. It’s being able to be me. Dress the way I want to dress and be who I want to be. From the moment I got into F1 with McLaren, there was an expectation: “Dress like this, this is how all the other drivers dress”. I said: “But this is who I am” and it was not accepted at the beginning but now I can say: “You have no choice”.
‘That’s really why I am in a more comfortable place now. I am comfortable in who I am and what I do and the life that I live and just because it’s different.’
Hamilton is not the same as the others. He refuses to conform and sometimes that makes people feel uncomfortable.
His success causes resentment, too. Hamilton’s three world titles put him level with Jackie Stewart as the most decorated British driver of all time. The fact that he has won 45 races, more than any one bar Michael Schumacher and Alain Prost, and that he has set 43 pole positions, more than anyone bar Schumacher and his great hero, Ayrton Senna, sets him apart.
Sometimes, it is said Hamilton holds himself apart from the other drivers. Sometimes, it is said he is aloof.
‘I’m not one of the boys in F1,’ he says. His only interest on grand prix weekends is to race and to win. ‘I don’t know how to yap to everyone. I am generally relatively quiet. I don’t start a conversation with someone for no reason.’
Hamilton is also out of step with some drivers on track safety. It is not that he is blasé about the dangers of the sport. Far from it. But he is old school. Part of the attraction for him is the danger.
‘That’s why it has excited me,’ adds Hamilton. ‘Of course, I don’t want to crash and get injured but that’s a part of it. In the drivers’ briefing, all these guys are talking about is the track being smooth. They want it to be smooth. They don’t want to feel any bumps.
‘Safety is something we have to work on and F1 has got to a safe place, but in Baku last week they wanted to open up the pit lane entry and make it easier. They were saying: “It’s so fast and dangerous” and I thought: “It’s not dangerous”. It was tricky to navigate but that is how racing should be.’
It is his relationship with one driver, in particular, his Mercedes team-mate, Nico Rosberg, that always comes under the fiercest scrutiny. There are signs, though, that their rivalry is entering a new phase.
‘It’s actually really good with Nico at the moment,’ says Hamilton. ‘Really, really good. I would not have expected it to be where it is. The respect that we have talked about is bigger than it has ever been. If I have a problem, I knock on his door and ask if I can speak to him. We say straight up: “Hey man, I wasn’t cool with that”. And he does that to me as often as I do to him.’