A glance at the career of former Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England on January 7, 1985. Right from the early days of his childhood he found affiliation with car racing and started Karting just in the age of eight at Rye House Kart Circuit. Afterwards, he kept on
winning kart races and cadet class championships.
In 2002, he graduated from kart racing to single-seaters and finished at third position in Formula Renault Series. In the following year, he won Formula Renault title after claiming ten victories and eleven poles.
In 2004, he made his way to Formula 3 Euroseries in which he finished fifth in the overall standings and claimed one victory plus two podium finishes. Later in 2005, he completely dominated the F3 Euroseries and won 15 races and secured 13 pole positions.
In 2006, he took part in GP2 for the first time in his career and won the championship. Moreover, he was able to secure McLaren race drive for the next season.
In 2007, he made an amazing debut in F1 and secured podium finishes in the first nine Grands Prix. Furthermore, he claimed victories in four races while took six pole positions and completely outperformed his teammate and defending champion at that time,
Fernando Alonso. He remained out-right favourite for the championship title throughout the season, however, he made some mistakes in the last two races of the season due to which he dropped to second place following the Finnish driver, Kimi Raikkonen who won
the title in the end.
In 2008, he became the youngest ever driver in the history of F1 to claim the championship title. He won five races and five podiums. Besides, he signed with McLaren for further four years until 2012.
In the next season, his car MP4-25’s pace was of no match with the contenders, Red Bull Racing and Scuderia-Ferrari. Nevertheless, he managed to secure first podium in Turkey and Canada while he finished at fourth place in the drivers’ standings.
In 2011, he was entirely outclassed by his teammate and compatriot, Jenson Button and came fifth in the overall drivers’ championship with 227 points ahead of Ferrari driver Felipe Massa.
In this season, the British driver is currently at second place in the drivers’ championship with 49 points following Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull.
He secured the pole in the season opener held at Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia and came third in the race. In addition, in the second race at Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia he again claimed the pole and secured third podium finish.
However, in the third race at Shanghai International Circuit in China he faced five-place grid penalty and started from seventh grid position while managed to keep up his consistency after securing third place finish in the race.
Conversely, in the fourth race at Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, he qualified for second place in the gird and came 8th in the race.
The Briton struggled during the preceding season as he could not manage to keep a balance in his personal and professional life. Nonetheless, he has expressed that he is prepared to make the necessary sacrifice in his personal life in this season so as to
give his due attention to the sport. He also said that he is focusing to show consistent performance with an aim to score reasonable points in every race throughout the season.
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