Lewis Hamilton Profile

LEWIS HAMILTON

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Friday 5th January 2007

Just one season into his F1 career and Lewis Hamilton is already being billed as a future multiple World Championship winner. And it's no surprise.

Lewis began his motorsport career in 1995 when he crowned the Super One British Champion as well as the STP Champion. It was the start of his dominance in all the series that he would enter.

The following year, still in the Cadet Class, he won the Sky TV Kart Masters as well as the Five Nations. The year he also began his association with McLaren, winning the McLaren Mercedes Champions of the Future series.

In 1997, in Junior Yamaha, he again was crowned the Super One British Champion as well as winning the McLaren Mercedes Champions of the Future series for the second successive season. A fourth in the Italian Open Championship the next season resulted in Lewis being signed by McLaren and Mercedes-Benz to Young Driver Support Programme.

The Brit then spent a year in Intercontinental A before moving to Formula A where he was crowned the European Champion. After that is was off to the British Formula Renault, where he won the title in 2003 and then on to the F3 Euroseries, winning the Championship in 2005.

Lewis's latest Championship success came in 2006, when he won the GP2 series with ART Grand Prix.

The Brit's achievements in junior series earned him a test driver role with the McLaren F1 team and after impressing team boss Ron Dennis, Lewis landed the coveted role of team-mate to Fernando Alonso in the 2007 F1 season.

And he quickly rose to the occasion.

Fourth place in his first qualifying and a third-placed finish in his debut grand prix in Australia saw Dennis' faith in Hamilton pay off.

The McLaren driver went on to record a further eight consecutive podium finishes, including race wins in Canada and the United States before finishing his first race off the podium and out of the points in the European GP, round 10 of the Championship.

However, he bounced back with a win in Hungary and followed that up with three more points-finishes before claiming his fourth win of the season in Japan.

With two races remaining on the calendar, Lewis looked a shoe-in for the World title, however a poor tyre decision led to him retiring from the Chinese GP, although he still entered the final race of the season as the leader in the Drivers' Championship.

Unfortunately for Lewis, though, it wasn't meant to be a gearbox problem cost him roughly half a minute and put an end to his quest of becoming the first rookie F1 World Champion. But he still finished runner-up in the Championship, beating his double World Champion team-mate Fernando Alonso.

2007, though, wasn't without it's problems for Hamilton as McLaren were involved in a spy scandal that resulted in them being excluded from the Constructors' Championship and almost saw Lewis and Alonso thrown out of the Drivers'.

There were also on-going issues between the two team-mates that came to a head in Hungary where Alonso deliberately held up Lewis in qualifying. Comments also regularly flew between the two through the media as the relationship deteriorated to the point where they were barely speaking.

As to whether they will have to talk to each other next season remains to be seen as while Hamilton is staying with McLaren, Alonso has left the team. Heikki Kovalainen will replace Alonso as Hamilton's new team-mate, offering an interesting line-up as two of F1's hottest youngsters go head-to-head.

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