LEWIS HAMILTON-

Lewis Hamilton is a British Formula One motor racing driver, who won the world championship in 2008. He began motor racing from a young age, but burst on to the Formula One season finishing second in his first season 2007. When he won the world title in 2008, he was aged just 23 and, at the time, was the youngest ever winner. He currently races for Vodafone McLaren Mercedes.

Lewis Carl Hamilton MBE (born in Stevenage; 7 January 1985) is a British Formula One racing driver from England, currently racing for the McLaren Mercedes team and is the youngest ever Formula One World Champion winning the title in 2008.

At the age of ten Lewis approached the McLaren team principal, Ron Dennis, at the 1995 Autosport Awards ceremony and told him "I want to race for you one day." Less than three years later, he was signed by McLaren and Mercedes-Benz to their Young Driver Support Programme. After winning the British Formula Renault, European Formula Three and GP2 championship in 2006, he became a McLaren F1 driver for 2007, making his Formula One debut 12 years after his initial encounter with Dennis. Coming from a mixed-race background, with a black father and white mother, Hamilton is often labelled "the first black driver in Formula One".

In his first season in Formula One Hamilton set numerous records and finished second in the 2007 Formula One Championship one point behind Kimi Räikkönen. His first world championship was won the following season, ahead of Felipe Massa by the same margin of a single point. He has stated that he wants to stay with the McLaren team for the rest of his F1 career.

In 2008, he successfully won the F1 World Championship in the last race of the season. He was narrowly pipped to the post in the BBC sports personality of the year award. In any other year, Lewis Hamilton would probably have won. But, 2008 was also a remarkable Olympic year for the British team. The title was awarded to triple gold medallist Chris Hoy.

Since winning the title in 2008, he has struggled to finish higher than 4th.