World-beater Hamilton pays an emotional tribute to father after clinching sixth F1 title
Briton pays tribute to father after triumph Champion says career is like ‘artist’s masterpiece’
Rubbing tears from his eyes in the cockpit, Lewis Hamilton struggled to absorb the feat he had just accomplished. Here in the heart of cowboy country, he had performed not his first rodeo, or his second, but his sixth. In his 13th season at the pinnacle of motor racing, Britain’s greatest driver has inscribed his name among the immortals of all sport as a six-time Formula One world champion.
It is a quite giddying number of titles: one more than Juan Manuel Fangio, twice as many as Sir Jackie Stewart. As he draped himself beside his car in the Union flag last night, he looked every inch the icon.
He preferred, he explained, to imagine himself as an artist. “I’m working on my masterpiece,” he said last night. “And it’s not finished yet. There are still more pieces of the puzzle to add.” How many more, one wonders.
Today, only Michael Schumacher stands above him in the firmament, with seven titles, and perhaps only for another year.
Fittingly, for this flourish, Hamilton produced a performance full of the qualities that he has made his signature. Where lesser mortals might have resorted to autopilot, knowing that they needed to finish only eighth to make sure of the ultimate prize, Hamilton, with 83 wins to his name, displayed a cussedness worthy of a driver chasing his first. Even the second place that he delivered behind Valtteri Bottas at the US Grand Prix came only after a relentless fight for victory. “My dad told me, when I was six or seven years old, never to give up,” he grinned. “That’s the family motto.”
Father Anthony, who has presided over every stage of Hamilton’s quest for greatness, could not conceal the strength of feeling as he watched his son enrich his legend.
“It’s an unbelievable moment,” he said. “Six championships, whoever would believe it? It means the world.”
While a red carpet was rolled out for visiting celebrities, a personal space was designated for Hamilton in parc ferme. “2019 world champion,” the sign read. “Unauthorised vehicles will be removed.” Such was the deference to Hamilton in the paddock, any rogue parking was unlikely. Even Matthew Mcconaughey, his Oscar-winning friend and an Austin resident, was on hand to salute him.
So, too, were much of his family: his mother Carmen, his stepmother, stepfather, his uncle George, even his aunt from Trinidad. After a feat on this scale, Hamilton wanted to share the joy as widely as possible. “It’s just overwhelming,” he said. “I feel so much emotion.” As for the message to his team, he adapted it straight from the title of the Maya Angelou poem tattooed across his back: “Still we rise, guys. I really can’t believe it.”
The alarm for his rivals is that Hamilton shows no sign of relenting. While most drivers two months shy of their 35th birthday might talk of retirement, he will line up again next year with the finest car, expressing every intention of carrying on beyond F1’s rules revolution in 2021. “As an athlete, I feel as fresh as can be,” he said. “It’s an honour to be up there with the greats – and I’ll keep pushing.”
In the mind of Toto Wolff, his team principal and the man at the helm for five of his six title triumphs, there is no limit to the milestones he could yet reach.
“Personally, I think there is no limit,” Wolff said. “He is still very motivated, and you can see that he wants to win every single race. We need to provide him with a good car. So long as that is the case, I believe he can go for more.”
Realistically, the only impediment to Hamilton’s coronation was the uphill run to the first corner, often a choke point to anybody starting from the third row on the grid. Wisely, he kept his distance from Max Verstappen, whom he has recently accused of “torpedo” driving, taking a sensible line to sweep past Charles Leclerc on the outside. Shooting through Austin’s signature S-bends, he also leapfrogged Sebastian Vettel, who was struggling with suspension problems.
As Vettel limped back to the pits, Hamilton made hay while the sun shone. Wedded to a one-stop strategy, when all the other leaders had decided on two, the championelect was thinking only of a win as the perfect adornment to his day of glory. The past two years in Mexico, he had experienced the strange sensation of taking the title despite finishing ninth and fourth.
But with so many of his family in the garage watching on, this was no time for half-measures. At one point, he even defied the orders of his race engineer, Pete Bonnington,
‘There is no limit to what Lewis could achieve – he is very motivated and aims to win every race’
refusing to pit when instructed as he sought to extract the most from his medium tyres. The battle for victory was drawn with Bottas.
Despite the high stakes, the Finn was under no obligation to hold back in pursuit of a win himself, passing his team-mate with a slingshot move down the main straight.
Hamilton grew flustered, snapping over the radio: “Give me a target, Bono. Work with me, man.” The bulletin came back that his lap times would put him in contention for the win, but that the prognosis for his tyres was precarious. If anyone is expert at reaching the end of a race on shredded rubber, it is Hamilton. “If you are a woman on this planet and you have this guy giving you a massage like he is treating the tyres, it is pure magic,” Vettel has joked.
Ultimately, not even the tyrewhisperer could quite pull it off this time. As Bottas loomed ever larger in his mirrors, Hamilton resorted to desperate defence. With four laps to go, Bottas pounced, reclaiming the lead and setting up his fourth win of the season, the best return of his three years with Mercedes.
Within minutes, though, he would be forced to surrender the stage to Hamilton, a sporting idol now in a category of his own.