Hamilton has been the most exciting out-and-out racer in Formula One over the past decade or so, probably the best wheel-to-wheel racer in that time and comfortably is in the best three drivers currently featuring.
All in all, three world championships speaks for itself.
Beyond that, he is testament to the fact hard work can pull oneself out from a non-privileged background and (tax matters notwithstanding), I absolutely cannot begrudge a self-made man living his life.
He also transcends his sport by his association with a plethora of celebrities which has in turn opened up the sport to different markets. The latter is a foul word but we all know what kind of world we live in. People criticise him for this but a dash of the rich and famous has always been associated with Formula One – its what rich and famous is that has changed, not the sport.
It is not far from an exaggeration to say the sport needs Hamilton more than he needs it, certainly with regard to their respective futures.
But, on the flip side, he’s SO ANNOYING. I refer to a piece on The Telegraph website posted last year and his interview on Channel 4 on Sunday pre-race.
The telling people about all the parties he goes to but one being a works do and another a family get-together and the toe-curling cringe of the “guess how many hours sleep I get” line (more than notorious, riotous party animal Margaret Thatcher was said to get, it turns out).
With the incessant need to tell everyone about how much fun he is having – craving recognition - Hamilton might well be the first person to speak like an Instagram posts.
He’s literally like the guy at uni who has discovered alcohol after moving away from the stern family home and wants everyone to know how drunk he is.
Sure selling the exciting (and indeed not exciting) aspect of one’s life is how a lot of people earn a living these days but those people are usually the ‘famous for being famous’ sort unlike the talented Hamilton.
But the complexity of this comes in that the very fact he does party, mingle with celebrity friends, tries his hand at music, films himself doing extreme sports and so on makes him so different from everyone else on the F1 grid. They may well do similar, but we don’t know about it as it everything is so media-managed where for whatever reason Hamilton is comfortable flaunting it.
In turn, why does it have to be celebrity brashness that makes someone appreciated as different? Why not celebrate Max Verstappen’s balls-out precociousness, Sebastian Vettel’s nuanced, very German take on British humour and Kimi Raikkonen’s refusal to give a shit about anything? These aren’t the most interesting things in the world but again, this goes back to the media-management issue. When Raikkonen lived in strip clubs (as that’s how it felt given how much coverage was dedicated to it), he was feted as the maverick king of F1, the crown Hamilton now holds.
And someone in there features that very British thing to be mistrustful of success by one of our own, particularly when we do not feel that success has been earned by anything other than 24/7 dedication to the craft and hard work.
Usually when writing things down, you get a feeling for what side of the fence you ultimately fall on. After putting this down, I still feel divided over Lewis Hamilton. But I doubt I’m alone.
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