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- Anything with an engine.
I really enjoy doing.
Hopefully I'll be racing Formula One.
- When you get in that Formula One car,
everything just disappears
and it's the most amazing thing ever.
- Well, my mindset's the same as it is every year.
I want to win.
- Lewis Hamilton is one of the greatest sportsmen ever,
not just for Great Britain, his home country,
but also the world.
- All those years ago,
we were all siting in the back of a trailer
in a little cavalier and everything,
we can never have imagined being here.
For me, growing up,
having people you see on TV
that could put a big smile on your face,
for me, I've never really imagined
that I'd be able to do that to young kids.
- He, naturally, has an aura about him.
Champions do.
- There's certain days,
when watching a driver transcending their machinery
and performing to a level that you weren't expecting,
that's kind of like art,
that's beyond just watching a sporting spectacle,
and Lewis is one of the very few drivers
who has done that in their career.
- He's not just about motor racing.
He's about fashion, he's about music,
he's about political activism,
he's about veganism.
- Yes, I've won this seventh title,
but we have another big, big fight to win
and that's for racial equality across the board.
[soft music]
- In Britain,
we've always had a strong motorsport heritage.
We've had so many Formula One teams based here,
we've got what was called "Motorsport Valley,"
where so much racing skill, and technology,
and expertise has come out of there.
So most of the Formula One teams currently are based
here in the UK,
and that means you've just always got
that interest, that influence,
whether it's engineers,
it's mechanics, or it's drivers.
And that meant we were ahead of
many other places in the world in terms of having
a conveyor belt of talent coming through.
- Circuit racing and hill climb was
really embraced by Britain.
There were enough people who were mad enough
to go out and buy their own cars.
And maybe it's the fact that we still had
quite an upper class at the time
and there were enough people
with enough disposable income
to be able to be the third son
of a rich family and go and kill yourself
on a motor track,
but it somehow seemed to appeal,
and the motor industry grew up around it
because there was so much enthusiasm to get faster cars.
- It's always hard to compare across areas,
it sounds like a cop-out answer,
but Formula One has changed so much with technology,
but what Lewis has done transcends a number
of different eras and technical regulations.
He's won every season he's raced
and he's done it all while fighting
for causes off-track as well,
that kind of means he transcends the sport.
You can talk about someone like Jim Clark,
who lost his life too young
to maybe hit some of the records
that Lewis has been able to,
and he's spoken about, by some older journalists
and an older viewers and fans,
as the greatest British driver ever.
But I think the way that Lewis has continued
to be successful year-after-year
in different eras himself is what puts him
above everybody else,
and the statistics back it up too.
- You can look back to the early days,
and Jackie Stewart, and to Jim Clark,
and to some of the more lionized drivers, like James Hunt,
who, of course, there's huge amount of affection for.
- I think what someone
like James Hunt did was put Formula One
more in the public eye, public conscience,
for a wider range of people
who, maybe, then saw what you did off the track
as much as they saw what he did on it.
And Lewis has done something similar,
but maybe for different ethnic groups.
The fact that he's the first black Formula One driver
just opened up this huge other number of people
who might be interested in the sport,
who might look at him as a role model.
And whether they do or don't like Formula One,
they just see someone who's being successful
in a field that previously someone hadn't been.
- He's someone who can engage
the worlds of fashion and of sport outside of F1,
which motorsport tends to keep itself very, very separated.
Formula One is 70 years old,
which, in human terms, is a couple of generations.
In racing terms,
Formula One is all about its own heritage,
it's all about its own pedigree,
because it talks about the heritage of the cars
that came up through it,
but a lot of what he's talking about is
its basis in a particular class,
in a particular type of people.
You see in every era of Formula One,
the same names.
There is just a huge amount of people following on
in the family footsteps,
and there's not very many people
who necessarily see a problem with that,
in terms of that excluding other people.
So it's very unusual to see people come in
from a background that is totally disconnected
from Formula One.
- Going really fast.
Anything with an engine, I really enjoy doing.
Hopefully, I'll be racing Formula One for McLaren.
- He started off with a remote control car,
which is a very unusual route in.
- He used to race that at a very high level
and he showed that he was very skilled,
controlling something like that.
- Lewis Hamilton is only seven years old.
How long have you been racing cars already, Lewis?
- About a year.
- So you must be pretty good at it.
Is it easy to do? - No.
- What you have to do then?
- This is the brake. - That's the brake.
You need the break.
- And these are the turn steering.
- So then his dad said,
"Okay, well, what about the real thing,
"if you're behind the wheel rather than behind a control?"
So he went into karts,
again, at a young age.
Six or seven, he was given his first go-kart
and could go and try that out,
and he just had this affinity and love for speed.
And it was a bit of an expression for him
to go out and enjoy himself.
- Ever since I got into karting,
there was always a danger there.
And I think it was that,
I guess you could call it,
the fear factor or whatever it is,
just knowing knowing that you have
that danger there is exciting.
Some people don't like it, some people do,
and that's something that spurs me on.
- It's a huge ask in terms of time
and the money is just staggering.
You are still talking about more than a house,
and that's just to get to single seaters.
- Motorsport's an expensive sport at the best of times,
but even from karting level,
you need a lot of money to be able
to go racing each week.
And in order to help fund Louis' career,
his father, Anthony, was working multiple jobs.
He was working full time
but then on top of that,
he did little odd jobs
just to bring in extra money
to buy things like a trailer to put the go-kart in,
to buy things like spare tires to go racing again.
They never really had the best equipment early on,
until they got bigger support.
- Having those strong family bonds, of course,
is going to be super important to you,
especially when you're going
through something where you're the only thing like you.
- Lewis' father, Anthony, was always there
to help guide him through,
certainly in the early part of his career.
He was his mechanic when he was in karts,
but then he became his manager
as they went through the ranks
and was very influential in trying to see
which way Lewis went.
- His father was a driving force,
but also it comes from within himself as well.
Here's someone who freely admits
he's very competitive,
but it's also the mind management,
the mental strength to make sure
that you maximize your talent.
- We all clash with our parents,
and definitely when it's a combination
of your own ambition and theirs,
things can get very heated.
But Anthony was someone who was able
to find ways into the world.
He found Jenson Button's dad and got him
to help him with tooling karts.
He found ways to connect to people within motorsport,
even though it wasn't a background
he knew much about.
It's really very, very wealthy people who compete.
- And they can spend huge sums of money
on having the best equipment,
the best kart,
even the best motor home to sit in
in-between races,
whereas Lewis would have been the complete opposite.
I think for any young racing driver in karting,
they're going to look at
who has the money and going to be a bit jealous of it.
Not just because it would be nice
to sit in a nice motor home in between races,
but because that equipment
that you're racing can have a huge, huge influence.
You can be the best driver ever,
but if your kart is down a little bit on power,
then someone else is going to
just blast past you on the straights,
and that will frustrate someone like Lewis
or anyone else who didn't have the money
at that time.
And it drives them on a little bit
to try that bit harder
and prove that they're good enough
and worthy of having the same equipment
- Lewis' journey is remarkable.
You talk to him, you talk to his father,
you talk to his brother,
about how they were regarded with disdain,
with contempt,
with open racist attitudes.
They would turn up in their car
and wait in the car park,
and there would be these steely glares,
these looks of disdain,
as they were there.
It's an almost puzzlement,
"Why are you here?
"Who are you?
"What are you doing?
"This isn't your...
"This isn't your sport, really.
"We don't see black people doing motorsport like this."
- He was astronomically successful.
He didn't get up the karting ladder by accident,
he got up it because he was noticeably better
than almost anyone else.
- When Lewis was coming up through
the karting ranks,
there was this young karter called Niki Richardson
who was a year above him,
who was the standout talent at that time,
and they'd be karting at Rye House Go-kart Track.
And Lewis' father, Anthony,
would go and stand where Nikki was braking and say,
"This is where you need to hit the brakes."
Of course, to try and improve, Lewis,
he'd probably go a little bit further,
a little bit closer to that corner
and say, "You find some more time if you brake even later."
And it wasn't always the most successful technique.
Lewis did that end up in the barriers
quite a few times, trying to get it right,
but it meant he was trying to make sure
he got absolutely everything out of the machinery he had
by looking at what the best was doing,
just ahead of him.
- The sport is littered with young drivers
who showed huge potential in Junior Formulae
and then just fell away for whatever reason.
Lewis Hamilton never faltered.
- Lewis was having a solid start
to his life in go-karts,
but he hadn't achieved anything huge until '95
when he won a British championship.
And by winning that championship,
he got to go to the Auto Sports Awards,
where the champions were recognized.
And while he was there,
he took the opportunity, as a youngster,
to go up to Ron Dennis,
who was the CEO and chairman of the McLaren Group,
who had the McLaren Formula One team,
and say, "One day, I want to drive one of your cars."
So Ron gave him his signature,
as Lewis had asked for, but said,
"Call me in," I think, "nine years
"and see if we can do something."
And it didn't take that long before Ron
actually was speaking to Lewis
about a future in Formula One
- What an opportunity he gave me, at 13 years old,
to make my way to Formula One.
And it's such an amazing story to see
that 10 years of hard grafting
with the support of a huge company
and what you can do with it.
- So I won't keep you waiting too much,
[indistinct] Ron's probably gonna get up here or...
I don't know.
Are you gonna come up here, Ron?
No?
- Ron Dennis is hugely influential
in the Lewis Hamilton story
because he had the power.
- For any driver that wants to reach Formula One,
you need to have huge backing.
Be that through a sponsor,
if it's family money, great if you've got it,
or through a Formula One team that wants
to help you get there.
And without McLaren's support
and Ron Dennis' support,
then Lewis would have struggled
if no one else had stepped up and filled that role.
So McLaren were very, very central
to him making it to Formula One.
- After a certain point, it is simply impossible,
unless you are very rich,
to fund a career as a private individual.
So when you get to the stage of moving up
to the junior series,
then you're dependent on the team keeping hold of you.
A lot of his appeal to McLaren was being British,
because they were always particularly interested
in picking up British talent.
There hadn't been a huge field of it for a while.
- I've come here to enjoy and to live my dream,
and that's what I'm doing.
- Lewis was picked up by McLaren in '98,
but then he went through a few more stages of karting
before he made it into cars.
And he joined Formula Renault in the early 2000s,
and had one season where he had a few wins
but wasn't consistent enough
to win the title,
and then went to dominate it in the second year.
And that's really when he stood out,
that he was going to be able to win,
not just in go-karts,
but in cars as well.
- It's a big step up.
There's a lot more eyes on you,
there's a lot more attention.
Suddenly, the talent scouts and the managers are looking
and people are also looking to see you fail.
- Any driver that might look good
in a go-kart has no guarantee
that they're gonna be good in an actual racing car
because the move into Formula Renault cars is
the first time you then have wings on the car
that create downforce,
so it's a totally different style of driving.
You're kind of driving a go-kart
a lot with the steering,
but lot with the throttle as well
to get the rear end moving around.
With a Formula Renault,
or a similar single seater car,
that downforce produced by the wings means
that you drive it totally differently.
So Lewis being successful in that category was
a really good sign.
Then, as you move up to something like Formula Three,
there's more power and more downforce.
So it's just the whole performance overall is improved.
The same with GP2.
And there's no power steering in some of these,
so physically it gets tough as well.
And then once you reach Formula One,
the levels are so high.
There's power steering because there has to be,
otherwise you won't be able to physically control the car
with the amount of downforce it has
and the power it has.
But it's all about the speeds being higher
in terms of straight line and cornering.
- A lot of people look at it as like...
They'll be like, "Oh, they're just driving in circles.
"It's just driving a car.
"What's physical about that?
"What's athletic about that?"
I mean, aside from the fact
that it's unbearably hot,
it's like sitting in a sauna,
and that's the cooler races
before you start going to somewhere
like Bahrain or the Singapore.
There's reflexes that have to be so, so, so fast.
You also have to do lots and lots
of micro-adjustments across the steering wheel.
You'll see them constantly moving their hands,
and that has to be accurate
and it has to be perfectly learned,
which might not sound like an athletic thing
but realistically, it is.
It's like the same skill that you have
to develop to be able to be
a really good guitar player or something.
On top of all that,
every time you go into a corner,
every time your brake,
it's going to put so much stress
on your neck and your shoulders,
that it's going to be basically trying
to tear your head off.
The G-forces that they're pulling
around the corner are like four or five G
just on their neck,
which makes your head and the helmet,
which is pretty heavy if you've ever put one on,
weigh four or five times what it normally would.
And then, as you go around the corner itself,
the downforce threatens to disembowel you,
and you've gotta, at the same time,
brake and accelerate perfectly,
and make all those micro-adjustments perfectly,
and be completely sure
that you know what you're doing
because you are actually looking at
that point three corners ahead.
Lewis' GP2 year was extraordinary.
It's very rare that you see someone hammer the field
in terms of just looking like
they must be from another category,
and have been accidentally placed there,
let alone as a rookie.
- The absolute standout moment of Lewis' time
in GP2 came in Turkey.
And it was the second race of the weekend there,
when he was in a really tight championship fight
with Nelson Piquet Jr.,
who's someone who had a lot of backing,
had a famous name behind him,
and looked like he was destined for Formula One.
But Lewis was trying to prove to McLaren
that he was also worthy of that seat
because it came at a time when McLaren were working out
who was going to partner Fernando Alonso
in the team the following year.
And he went into this second race in Turkey
and Lewis spun, very early on,
and dropped to the back of the field.
- [Announcer] Taking a look at what happened to Hamilton.
Just loses it over the curb.
- Nelson Piquet Jr. was up at the front
and it looked like it was all slipping away from him.
And he produced a brilliant fightback drive
to finish second,
overtook Piquet in the process,
and that really made everyone sit up and take notice
that this guy was special.
- [Announcer] Still 21 laps for
a classic Hamilton fight back through the field.
Hamilton's on fire here.
Look at him, he's overtaking car after car.
He's going to try something.
You knows he's going to try something.
And here we go!
Down the inside of Lopez,
he's up to eighth now
and flying!
Can he let him through?
Hamilton is through, into third place
and Glock is going to have to give away!
Is Hamil...
Oh, he is going to try!
And for second place,
that was an absolutely spellbinding performance
by Lewis Hamilton.
- In a sense, you could think he was driving angry
because he'd made a mistake earlier on and spun,
but they're in spec cars.
GP2 is the same car for everybody.
There's different ways you can set it up
but they've got the same machinery,
so it's driver talent that's going to shine through,
and what he showed was that
he had so much more talent on that day, in that car,
than anybody else in the field.
That he could climb through
and overtake so many others.
Showed brilliant racecraft,
Showed a cool head after his early mistake,
and he got the absolute best result
he could have after slipping back.
- [Interviewer] Lewis, a year ago, you were racing
at Silverstone in Formula Two.
Now, you're a favorite to win your home Grand Prix.
I mean, this is beyond dreaming,
isn't it? - It is, it is.
And I'm just overwhelmed to even be in Formula One
and to be in the team that
I've always dreamed of being with.
But to come to my home Grand Prix,
leading the world championship in my first year,
this is way beyond anything I could have ever imagined
or way beyond my ambitions.
But I'm not going to be disappointed
if I don't win the championship,
I was just hoping to do a good job.
So I'm sure if I just continue doing the job I am doing,
then we'll have to wait and see
what happens at the end.
- They all thought, "Well, Hamilton's going to come in
"as a rookie,
"he's not going to do very well.."
Actually he usurped and over-performed against his teammate.
This was a two-time world champion
just come out of driving for Renault, 2005, 2006.
The man who had taken over from Michael Schumacher,
the great Spaniard,
the man who was going to dominate Formula One
for the next few years.
And yet, who should have won the title
when they went head-to-head
in the same machinery?
Lewis Hamilton in 2007.
- Something Ferrari, who were McLaren's main rival,
have always done very well is pick
a number one driver;
a driver that they put the most resource behind,
that they get the other driver
to help and make sure that they get
the most points possible to win the driver's championship.
What McLaren didn't do in 2007, it's the same.
They let both drivers fight it out.
- Alonso was in no way ready
for how fast Hamilton was,
and it had seemed clear when Alonso went
to McLaren that year,
that he was taking the championship
with rookie support,
which turned into really, really ugly games
between the pair of them.
- So that meant there was tension early on anyway,
and as the season progressed
and Hamilton performed well,
and was in the drivers championship,
Alonso got more and more frustrated with that,
which meant Hamilton also fought back
because Alonzo was giving him a hard time.
And when it came to Hungary,
there was a point in qualifying
where Hamilton disobeyed a team order
that would have helped Alonso.
It would have only been fair,
it's the way the team wanted to run,
but Hamilton disobeyed the order
to try and improve his own position.
And then, Alonso took matters
into his own hands when they both came into the pitch
to change tires before their final qualifying attempt.
And when Alonso was told to leave the pit lane,
he didn't.
He waited because he knew it would hold Hamilton up.
I mean, Hamilton couldn't go out
and try and qualify.
It actually earned along to a penalty,
but it just showed that the relationship was
really falling apart within the team.
- And usually, it would be you trying
to block a rival team,
not your teammate.
- And in the end, they finished level on points,
and one point behind the eventual champion,
who was Kimi Raäikkoönen.
But if just one driver had had priority
at a different race,
they'd scored the extra points
they needed to win the championship.
So what you need is the teams backing
a little bit as well
when it comes down to such a tight fight.
Lewis showed brilliant consistency
in his rookie season in Formula One.
He was on the podium or winning
for a number of races from the word go.
He finally got his first win in Canada,
but he backed up, again, with another one
in the United States,
and he was leading the championship with two rounds to go.
And it had definitely been his consistency
that had got him there.
He'd had one race when he finished
outside the points because of a crash in Germany.
But apart from that,
he'd always been scoring highly.
All Hamilton had to do at the Chinese Grand Prix,
which was the penultimate race of the season,
was finish close to his teammate, Fernando Alonso,
and not be beaten by more than six points
by Kimi Raäikkoönen,
who was the rank outsider at this stage.
Raäikkoönen wasn't the driver they were worried about.
It was the inter-team battle
between Alonso and Hamilton.
So he was just having to make sure
that he was either close to or beat Alonso,
and he'd be world champion with a race to spare.
- [Announcer] As long as Alonso finishes behind him,
he's still going to be the world champion.
- Lewis put the car on poll,
did a great job in qualifying,
and was leading the first part of the race in the wet,
and everything looked perfect,
like he was going to win the championship.
- [Announcer] A picture then of Hamilton,
who just looks...
I don't know if its a piece of paper stuck
in his right rear,
or if its down to the canvas.
Hamilton getting very, very wide
in turns one and two.
- But then, McLaren kept him out
as a track was drying,
and his tires started to get worn out.
And he went off at one point,
and Kimi Raäikkoönen overtook him,
but that still wasn't a problem,
where Raäikkoönen him was going to finish.
If Raäikkoönen won and Hamilton was second,
Hamilton would still be world champion.
- [Announcer] He's gotta come in.
I think he's got a...
I think he's got some delamination
on that right rear tire.
- But then McLaren kept them out longer and longer,
until they finally brought him in
for his pit stop to put on dry tires.
And by then, his wets were so worn out,
they had no grip at all,
and he just went off the track coming into the pit lane
and couldn't get going again,
so he retired from the position
that would have given him the title.
- [Announcer] Turned into the picture.
Anyway, here comes Lewis Hamilton!
He goes straight off
into a gravel check.
Can he keep the wheels spinning?
Can he get some momentum going?
No, he can't!
It's all going to get away from him.
- Lewis would have been the first rookie world champion
and it looked right within his hands.
- There is nothing, as a driver,
that you can do to take away
the curse that sometimes comes to a car.
- Hamilton matched the record for the most wins
in a rookie season with four,
I think Jacques Villeneuve is the other driver
that has that one.
But he also had the most consecutive podium finishes
from the first race of any rookie.
And at the end of it,
he had the highest points total
that any rookie would have had.
Sadly, it just wasn't the championship winning one.
- It was a great year.
I couldn't really have asked for more, if I'm honest.
Just because...
I went into the last race and I just said,
"Whatever happens in this race,
"I'll be happy because I've, by far,
"exceeded my expectations and everyone else's."
And I think I've put my feet comfortably
into Formula One,
everyone knows who I am.
And I'm only 22, so I've got plenty of time.
And as you know,
I've got the ability and I know,
so just with a little bit more hard work,
we'll be able to do it.
To come from the box trailer,
to now sitting in Formula One,
and to have people noticing me
and to have my name all over Santander shops,
it's just really weird.
We just sat there and went, "What a year.
"Can you believe it this year?
"This time, last year,
"all those years ago,
"we were all sitting in the back of a trailer,
"in a little cavalier and everything."
We couldn't ever have imagined being in here in this year,
so you cannot complain.
Even if I finished last,
the fact that I was able to compete
in Formula One World Championship is just...
Not many people get to do that,
so just pretty grateful.
Me and Fernando, we get on well,
and we try to tell people that
but they just didn't believe it.
They like to write their own things.
The media, it was just trying to put spins on everything,
which is a bit of a shame, really
because they don't really give you
a true feeling of what's going on.
And obviously, there was loads
of different things sparking about,
but the aim was to beat him, I did.
Beat a two-time world champion.
I mean, to do that in your first year,
I didn't expect that for sure.
But I get on really well with him,
so I think for next year,
we know what to expect.
And if we are working together,
I'm sure we'll do a better job.
- After such an impressive rookie season,
the expectations were so high on Hamilton in 2008.
McLaren were a race-winning team,
should have been a championship winning team.
Fernando Alonso had left,
he'd gone back to Renault because of the way
the relationship had broken down completely,
McLaren allowed him to leave.
So Hamilton looked like he was going to be the lead driver,
and he clearly had the potential
to lead that team for a number of years.
So the future was looking very bright
for both him and the team,
and with a car that was capable of winning the championship.
I think Lewis probably went into that season
as the title favorite.
- You'll notice lot of drivers who are successful tend
to stick with the same teams.
There's very rarely drivers
who fall out with their teams or move around very much,
particularly in the modern era
because it is so, so complicated.
- There is a lot of pressure.
I'm only 23.
I'm still very young.
It's my second year in Formula One
and I've got a team of 800-1,000 people behind me,
making sure that my car is
the quickest one out there,
and I've got to go out there and do the job.
And so, there is a lot of pressure,
but I think I've been building up to it for years,
so I do feel there's more pressure coming from myself
than actually outside.
I have to pinch myself near enough every day,
especially when I'm at the races,
because I'm in the garage
and I've got all these people working around,
and working for me,
making sure my car's there.
And I'm thinking,
"I remember being there as a teenager,
"watching Kimi driving,
"or watching Mika drive,
"and watching David Coulthard drive."
And it's very surreal that I'm there now,
and I'm the man for them.
The great thing is I've got
a great relationship with the team,
so it's very much a family environment for me.
And I thoroughly...
I'm McLaren through and through,
McLaren-Mercedes through and through.
I'm a lot wiser now than I was last year.
I think last year, I felt perhaps...
If I look back,
I feel like I was a kid last year.
Not really knowing what to expect.
This year, I'm managing my life a lot better,
but I've learned so much about the car
and about rising above the difficulties
you come across.
And I think that's the key.
I've always said, "Rise above it" is one
of my favorite quotes.
I mean, I had my first season of Formula One
and I came second by one point
to Kimi Raäikkoönen,
who's been racing for six or seven years in Formula One.
And I beat the world champion,
the two time world champion.
So if you look, you got to take the positives from it
and move on.
It was a great season,
way better than anyone ever expected.
And I'm now in my second season,
I've got a much better feel for who I am
and what I've got to do,
and my confidence is higher than ever.
So it's still going to be very tough,
every year is going to be tough,
but I feel I can do a better job this year.
- The standout highlight for 2008 has to be
the season finale.
Brazil was full of such drama and jeopardy,
and it all came down to the final corner
on the final lap of the final race
to find out who was the world champion,
and the contrasting emotions were huge.
One of the things that Hamilton would have learned
from 2008 is just the fact
that you only need to get the result that matters.
There was a point in 2007,
again, in Brazil,
where he didn't need to win the race
to win the championship,
like it had been in China when he slid off the road.
All he needed was a lesser result,
compared to what other drivers needed to do.
But Hamilton's style early on,
and a bit McLaren supporting him too,
was to go all out for the best result,
go for the win.
That's the best way to wrap it up.
And as he's matured,
he's kind of learned that doesn't matter.
There's some days where second, third,
fourth, even fifth,
is the best you can do,
but that might be all you need
when you add it all together
at the end of the season.
At the time that Felipe Massa crossed the line
to win the race,
at his home race,
it looked like he was world champion.
He was in a position that would give him the title
and Lewis Hamilton was in a position
that meant he wasn't going to win the championship,
but Hamilton then gained one place
at the final corner,
overtook Timo Glock,
who was struggling in the rain,
and came through to get the position
he needed to take the championship.
To have two drivers, technically, be world champion
within a matter of seconds,
for everything to have come down,
after such a long season,
to that final corner,
I just don't think you can beat drama like that.
- What we try to do is we try to remain dignified
and set an example, I suppose, for others
who wants to follow the sport,
'cause not everybody that follows Formula One wants
to be in Formula One.
Maybe they're just looking for inspirational figures,
people who have struggled hard
to make it to the pinnacle of their sport
and set an example,
and we want to set an example.
[audience applauding]
- A sensational year.
I mean, for me, to win a world championship, for one,
is, as I've always said, as a dream of mine.
[crowd cheering]
It's pretty awesome for me to be standing here,
seeing all these trophies
and my heart's still racing.
I haven't really...
It hasn't really hit home yet.
And it's quite unreal, really,
because you think about the whole story
of me meeting Ron when I was 10,
I mean, the first time I came
to McLaren, the old headquarters,
the first time I saw my Formula One car,
my first test,
the opportunity I had back at Silverstone in 2006,
and just the whole journey we've done.
And I just wanna...
I'm standing here today to say
a big thank you to all of you,
and we have proved to everyone that we are the best team,
the car is the most reliable.
And we've just been put under
so much pressure by whoever;
the fans, the media,
just the championship in itself,
and we've always had to become bigger and better,
and we've done that as a team.
We stuck together.
We've lost together and we've won together,
and a really big one this week.
We are the world champions and...
[indistinct]
- I'm here now
and I've set the tone.
Everyone knows what I can do.
So staying here, it doesn't seem to be such a problem
but I still have to keep on performing.
I still need to be fit.
So over the years,
as I get older and older,
I need to keep working harder and harder
to make sure I'm still on top.
But there's definitely no...
There was no point [mumbles]
"I'm here now, I can relax."
It's not the case.
I've got to keep on pushing
because everyone's doing the same thing.
- Although the decline would not
completely hit for a few more years,
they were going into a phase where, operationally,
they were having significant problems.
The effects of the 2007 scandal were
really beginning to bite in a major, major way.
So the 2009 car had not had the investment
that would have been put into it over 2008.
And then, that rolled into 2010.
- [Announcer] The reigning Formula One world champion,
Lewis Hamilton.
- The thing that you have to say is impressive is Lewis won
a race in every single year,
even in cars that absolutely were not race winners.
- [Announcer] The 2009 Formula One challenger
the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes MP4-24.
- [Interviewer] Lewis, you've now seen a car
with your name on it
and the number one on the front.
How did it feel when you first saw that?
- It feels great.
It's a very proud moment.
And it's just gonna be cool having number one
on a car for whole season.
It's the best.
- [Interviewer] People have suggested that
new regulations make these cars a bit ugly.
What do you think?
- Well, regardless if I thought that,
I can't say that.
- The thing about new regulations is that
they will almost always shake up the field.
- The problem McLaren had with this regulation change was
they're in such a tight championship battle in 2008,
that they kept developing their 2008 car.
They kept putting a resource behind that
to make sure they won that championship.
Partly, I think, because they'd missed out in 2007,
they weren't willing to let
it get away from them again,
but that meant other teams
that weren't in the battle spent more time and money earlier
on the new regulations
and were able to get a jump on McLaren.
And it meant McLaren and Ferrari
both started the season away from the pace.
For Hamilton, it was a bit of a weird situation
because the car was clearly not competitive enough
for him to win the championship,
and that's frustrating for driver.
To be the world champion,
to be on an upward trajectory,
and certainly as someone who's young
and as highly rated as Lewis,
but then not have the machinery to perform.
And all he'd ever known
in Formula One was having race winning cars.
So he had to completely adapt
his mindset, his approach,
what constitutes a good result in a race.
And that was a bit tough for him to do too
at an early age.
So a bit of a combination of the fact
that the car wasn't competitive
and Hamilton was still relatively inexperienced,
even for a world champion,
just meant it was a tough season for him.
- There is no driver who is happy not to win.
- They got to a point in Lewis' mind
where he felt he needed to break away from his father,
that this relationship on a personal level was being hurt
by the fact that they still had
this professional one,
when you're in Formula One
at the top of the sport,
it was so intense.
So he felt that it's better for them
to go their separate ways,
and I think that really hurt Anthony at the time,
because, obviously, your son saying to you,
"I don't need you anymore in this capacity,"
or "I don't want you in this capacity anymore,"
sounds really painful to hear,
but it was done with a long-term view
that it would actually help them
with their personal relationship.
And it did make things a bit rough
for Lewis for a while.
He used to take things in his personal life very hard
and it would sometimes impact him on the track.
But once he got his stuff settled off-track,
it meant he could perform better
on the track too.
- To, firstly, he 2008 Formula One World Champion,
Lewis Hamilton,
and the reigning Formula One champion,
Mr. Jenson Button.
- McLaren basically created the British Dream Team in 2010
because Jenson Button had not had it easy
in Formula One in his earlier part of his career.
But then in 2009, it all come together for him
and the team he was with then, Brawn,
had the best car
and he won the world championship.
Well, it meant you'd had British World Champions
in 2008, in Lewis Hamilton,
and 2009, in Jenson Button,
and then McLaren managed to put them together
in the same team.
So you had the two most recent world champions,
both being British,
both driving for a British team together.
It was the perfect scenario for fans.
- Welcome gentlemen.
It is that time for you to unveil
your 2010 car.
- Well, I think there were a lot of god awful people
who really wanted Jenson,
who they saw as more of a proper British driver,
to show Lewis up.
- Please unveil the Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes MP4-25.
- There was a real, huge amount of energy
that they wanted proof that Hamilton was aggressive,
he was careless,
he wasn't behaving right with the team,
and that was why they slipped backwards.
Whereas, obviously, you've got the champion at the time,
Button, coming in.
"He's gonna sort it all out.
"It's going to be really proper now."
We know why, it's because Lewis is black
and Jenson is white.
And I don't think that either of them...
Or I certainly don't think Jensen would have
ever thought about it that way,
but that is, without question,
how it was treated in the media
and how it was treated within the world of motorsport,
to some extent.
- McLaren has appeared to have been
your team over the years gone by,
Jenson's come in now.
Do you feel like top dog or is it
very much a shared role? - Well, the only reason
you say that is because I've been at the front in the team.
So I don't particularly agree with that.
But obviously, I've been with them
for many, many years,
and I definitely am a part of the family.
We are a great family
and we've welcomed Jenson in,
and he's just as much a part of the team as I am.
So I don't think that's going to have
any advantage on my side
or any impact to how we work for it.
- You've got to be best friends with your teammate
but also fierce rivals.
- Jensen just said,
"To get along with your teammates,
"you have to be the best of friends
"and the fiercest of rivals."
Would you go along with that?
Is that something you see in him,
that you could be the best of friends?
- I've never ever heard that saying before,
so I'm not gonna say whether I agree with that or not.
I mean, I think what you have to do is you have to have
the utmost respect for one another.
That's what I'll say.
- There was a time he made a bit of a joke
about the fact that he was getting targeted by the stewards
and wondered if it was because of his race.
Now, it wasn't,
but you can understand why he'd wonder it
because of course, nobody else has
that consideration to think about.
And on the flip side,
you do still get the disappointing signs
of people being openly racist towards him.
In 2010, in Spain,
he was racing for McLaren
and Fernando Alonso was racing for Ferrari.
The Spaniards were very, very vociferously
behind their home driver.
But the rivalry between Hamilton
and Alonso got pretty toxic at McLaren,
so there was a lot of fans that didn't like Lewis
and they were openly racist towards him.
It seemed to be a problem within Spanish sport
at the time then,
and as Lewis was going around
on the driver parade,
monkey chants were being directed
at him as he came past.
That's something that no other driver has to deal with.
That was also fans that, previous to that,
had painted themselves black and pretended
to be Lewis Hamilton's family.
And these were incidents that got swept
under the carpet by Formula One.
They were pointed at as,
"This is bad, we should stop this."
And then nothing else has done about it.
- It's always driven him on,
even from his days going karting and so on,
he and his father, and then his brother,
used to turn up and people looked
almost down their noses at them.
Like, "Who are you?
"Why are you here?"
That drives him on.
I mean, you think if someone was doing that
to you all the time for no other reason
that you were a different color to them,
you either sink or you grow and think,
"Right, I'm going to show you
"and I'm going to achieve as much as I can."
- '10, '11, '12, were strange years at McLaren.
The team was struggling worse
than it even looked like it'd been struggling.
Although, the really bad times came later,
it was definitely lining itself up for them.
All of the well-oiled parts that have to work
suddenly start grinding on each other instead.
- One of the instances I always remember
about dealing with Lewis was back
when I interviewed him in 2012,
and he was at McLaren,
and he was having a bit of a tough time.
And asked him a question about his personal life, off-track.
We'd been told before the interview
that we weren't allowed to discuss this,
but then the way he was speaking,
his demeanor was very low, dejected,
it was clear something was up.
So I asked him what was wrong.
His previous race, he had performed very well.
And he started off by being very defensive,
being like, "Nothing's wrong.
"I don't know why you'd think that,
"I'm completely fine."
But what Lewis does very well is then
he likes to articulate exactly how he's feeling.
He does like to be open and honest.
And he spoke for two, three minutes,
opening up eventually.
And he went from saying that nothing was wrong
to completely contradicting himself
and saying, at the end,
"It's actually been a really tough time."
But it showed a bit of insight there,
that Lewis is a genuine guy.
He quite often will try and close himself off from it
because that leaves you as
someone who's vulnerable,
if you're always being that way.
But if he's engaging with you
and he's speaking to you,
he's speaking in an honest and fair way.
And it was something that, I think,
he was then allowed to do when he moved to Mercedes,
is be himself more
and that's helped his success.
The greatest drivers tend to go to teams
that aren't winning races
and help them start to become successful.
Michael Schumacher went to Ferrari
when Ferrari were not very good,
and he helped them become a dominant force,
and added all of those world championships
because of the work he did
and the groundwork he helped set,
and Lewis wanted to emulate that, in some way,
and Mercedes offered the opportunity to do that.
- Niki Lauda saw his opportunity
that Lewis Hamilton wasn't achieving with McLaren,
and there was a chance to bring him
into the fold of Mercedes.
- It was shock when Lewis opted
to leave McLaren and joined Mercedes,
mainly because it was such a risk.
McLaren had given him success,
they'd given him race winning cars,
the whole way through his career.
At that point, it didn't seem like there was anything
that would suggest McLaren wouldn't
still be winning races moving forwards.
And although Hamilton hadn't added
another championship to his number, at that point,
he still was in a team that obviously loved him,
that he had enjoyed racing for up to then,
but he'd had some trouble maybe off-track
that had been affecting the way
he'd been performing on the track.
And Lewis looked at it as a chance
for a clean break, a fresh start.
He didn't want a team that controlled him so much,
like McLaren had done throughout his career.
- Particularly, because he had been a junior at McLaren,
he had a very restrictive contract.
He had lots of ambitions,
he had lots of opportunities.
- A lot of people criticize Lewis Hamilton
for running his life how he wants
as opposed to how Formula One normally demands.
But Hamilton is absolutely adamant,
he does things his way because that's what gets
the best out of him.
And that's probably an intrinsic part of why
he left McLaren to go to Mercedes,
because he felt that he was still being treated
like a young driver
and not being given the respect.
And maybe Mercedes treated him more as a partner,
as opposed to an employee.
And so, he was given greater head
and greater leeway.
And so, who can see he's got it wrong?
- In this sport, it's not unlike football,
where you are teammates
with lots of different people.
It's obviously, we are teammates as two drivers,
and our ultimate goal is to make sure
we get those two cars across the line,
first and second.
But also, we wanna be the first one ahead of that.
So there's that internal competition
and the external competition.
- It's all fine being friends with your teammate
until you're competing.
- The one person you need to beat
in Formula One is your teammate.
So therefore, there is this idea
that he's your mate 'cause he's your teammate.
No, he's not.
He is the one person you need to beat
because he is the other person
who has exactly the same machinery,
all being well, that you have.
So if you are behind your teammate consistently,
it must work really hard on here.
- So there's a degree to which you have
to, at least, pretend to have a entente cordiale
between the pair of you
in order to work together.
- I mean, I don't have that to better anyone.
Of course, I want to maximize in my life,
in the opportunities and the gifts that I was given,
and all the opportunity that is at hand.
- So Lewis and Nico Rosberg used
to be karting teammates back in the late 90s
and early 2000s.
And back then, it was obviously fun.
Their dream was to go and race
in Formula One together.
- They were genuine friends,
they celebrated each other's successes,
and I think they were delighted to be teammates.
That would have been something
that would have been a big sell
for Hamilton moving to Mercedes,
was to be reunited with Rosberg.
In order to get them to win,
they turned them against each other.
There seems to have been a point
that division was shown,
and then it became outright paranoia.
So it's a method that works competitively.
Is it sustainable
and does it make everyone involved go crazy?
No, it's not sustainable.
And yes, it will ultimately screw things up
and create this incredibly intense environment.
- Lewis needed a little bit of love
and support early on.
There was a couple of times where Hamilton was running ahead
of Rosberg in a race,
and Mercedes were on for a good result.
One was in Malaysia,
they were on for third and fourth in the race,
and there was no point in risking them swapping positions.
So Mercedes told the drivers,
"Don't race each other,"
which meant Rosberg had to sit behind Hamilton.
And he didn't particularly like that
because he didn't want this driver coming in,
new to the team that he'd been working with for awhile,
and having a little bit more authority
or getting a bit more preferential treatment.
So there was always this effort
from both of them to want equality
within that team.
But then when we came to 2014,
Mercedes was the only team
that was ever going to win a championship,
so that meant they were their two main rivals.
- I think in 2014,
they were still getting on together.
They were still working to push the team forward together.
Hamilton was probably a little bit surprised
how competitive Rosberg was with him.
Things really started to go in 2015.
The rivalry was intense enough on track,
and then there'd be people outright making stuff up
about everything else off-track,
and a lot of conjecture about
everything that really was happening already.
By 2016, Hamilton did allege
that Mercedes was sabotaging his car at one point.
Or seemed to allege,
after the third engine blowout.
- [Announcer] It's Lewis Hamilton,
there's a fire at the back of that Mercedes car.
His engine has blown
and his chances of winning the Malaysia Grand Prix with it.
- Oh no, no.
- It's a very, very odd feeling right now,
I have to say.
It's very hard to stand here
and be old positive and be like,
"Yeah, it's going to be great"
'cause I'm the only one with Mercedes engines
that have been failing this year
out of all the engines,
which is...
It just doesn't sit right with me.
- There was a moment in 2016 where,
by now, we were a couple of years into Mercedes dominance,
where Hamilton and Rosberg were
really fighting for the title,
and Rosberg was leading at the start of the race in Spain
and Hamilton went to overtake
because he'd seen Rosberg had a bit
of a problem with his car.
- [Announcer] Good start from Carlos Sainz.
He's ahead of Valtteri Bottas,
[indistinct], turn three we go!
- Rosberg defended, Hamilton went onto the grass,
and spun and took them both out.
- [Announcer] And it's Nico Rosberg,
and Hamilton's onto the grass.
And Hamilton's had a massive crash!
And he's crashed into his teammate!
The two Mercedes come together
as Hamilton tried to pass on the inside!
And he can cover his hands over his eyes,
and he won't want to see that again!
- And it was the first time they properly collided
and taken each other completely out of the race.
They'd had incidents before
where they raced hard but fair,
but this one was the worst thing you could do as teammates,
is crash into each other.
And off the back of that,
there was clearly a sign from within the team
of descent towards one driver or the other
for their part in it.
And it really, I think,
made for a big crack between the two of them.
Going into the final race in Abu Dhabi,
Lewis needed to win the race
to have a chance of winning the championship,
and he needed his teammate, Nico Rosberg,
to not finish right behind him.
- Conundrum for Rosberg:
If Vettel gets a run at him on DRS,
does he fight him or not?
- Going into the race,
he'd said he wasn't going to do anything
that would jeopardize Rosberg's race,
but they were leading, first and second,
Hamilton in the lead,
and what he did was drive at a slower pace
that backed Rosberg towards the cars behind,
so it left him under threat.
- [Announcer] Lewis is backing them up even more.
- [Announcer] and Rosberg knows it.
So does he let Sebastian Vettel go?
He can't afford any contact.
He can't afford an entanglement here.
- Now, the drivers behind never really tried
to move on Rosberg,
they knew it was risky.
If there'd been contact,
it would have meant that
if Rosberg was taken out,
they'd be to blame for him losing the championship.
But Hamilton had this incredible skill
to be able to go fast enough
that Rosberg can overtake him
but slow enough that other drivers have caught up.
So it showed the level of talent that he had
but at the same time,
he was then putting his teammate at risk.
And if it all gone wrong,
that was going to be really damaging
to Mercedes as a team.
So what they were watching was some infighting play out
in front of the world in a title decider.
- [Announcer] Lewis Hamilton wins
the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix!
Nico Rosberg is second!
He takes the championship 34 years after his father!
It's like father, it's like son!
- He's willing to push it right up to
what you would call "the limit of fair play,"
that was in that gray area
where it was maybe being a bit unsportsmanlike,
but it wasn't illegal.
What he could control, he was going to try and control.
- Well, my mindset's the same as it is every year.
I want to win.
It's a pretty, pretty simple mindset to have.
It's a lot harder obviously to do that
but every year, wanting to grow,
wanting to improve as a driver
and as a human.
- Rosberg knew that when he won the title,
he had to leave because of everything it took
for him to beat Hamilton,
it just wasn't sustainable longterm.
- Hamilton rivalries are an interesting topic.
The most obvious one is with Sebastian Vettel.
- So Lewis was the youngest drivers champion
at the time when he won his championship in 2008,
but then Sebastian Vettel came through the ranks
and usurped him with that record,
and went on to win four in a row
for Red Bull, from 2010 to 2013.
And Hamilton was in the fight,
but never winning the championship in those years.
And it was frustrating for him
because he felt like he should be getting those results,
that he could be getting those records.
And at that point,
it looked like Vettel was going to be the man
that might match Michael Schumacher's
overall record of wins and championships.
So Hamilton was looking at it
as someone who basically was a threat
to his potential legacy within the sport,
if he could go and achieve those results.
And then, things started to get a little bit more tasty
when Mercedes became dominant
and Lewis started coming back at Vettel
in terms of the wins,
started getting more titles.
- Arguably, Ferrari and Vettel should have been champion
those two years, but they weren't.
And there were some very tetchy moments.
And whenever you'd have drivers going
for the ultimate prize in motorsport,
and I suppose it's the same in boxing or any sport,
there's respect, there's admiration,
but is there mutual appreciation?
Possibly, but do they like each other?
Do they have to like each other?
Probably not, because you want to go out there
and you want to nail that person.
- [Announcer] Oh dear.
There is Daniil Kvyat,
stopped by the side of the track.
- In 2017, they were fighting
for the championship,
one in a Mercedes, one in a Ferrari,
and they were racing each other wheel-to-wheel
in Azerbaijan.
And Vettel felt that Hamilton was using
some dirty tricks behind the safety car,
and brake tested him,
and basically made Vettel run
into the back of Hamilton's car.
- [Announcer] The safety car is coming out.
So there goes Hamilton.
- [Lewis] Safety car needs to speed up
because this is too slow.
- [Announcer] Lewis is backing up the pack a little bit
and oh!
He went into him!
- [Vettel] He brake-tested me!
- Hamilton did no such thing.
Vettel actually just made a mistake,
but he was so incensed to what he'd seen.
And these two were clearly fighting
to be the best, potentially, of all times,
they were fighting for a fifth world championship each,
that Vettel then drove into Hamilton
to show his frustration.
- [Vettel] What the [beep] going on?
- [Lewis] Vettel literally just came alongside me
and turned in and hit me.
- And it just showed actually what was on the line here.
These were two drivers that
clearly were on a very similar level,
but they were looking at a legacy
that would go long beyond when
they currently race in Formula One.
- But who came out on top in 2017
and who came on top in 2018?
Lewis Hamilton.
Ferrari and Vettel cracked,
and he didn't.
- But from 2017, when Mercedes delivered
a race winning car and championship winning car once again,
there were bigger threats
from the likes of Ferrari and Red Bull,
but they were still the standout team.
And that allowed Hamilton,
with Valtteri Bottas as almost his wing man,
as the guy that was good and helping
but wasn't always the biggest threat,
allowed Hamilton to dominate completely.
He started racking up records left, right and center
for race wins, pole positions,
fastest laps,
and now world championships, matching Michael Schumacher.
- It's not just the titles.
It's the time that he had in Formula One
at the highest level,
continually repeating maximum performance
after maximum performance.
There's no dip.
- Hamilton's ability to not make mistakes is
what has served him incredibly well
all the way through his racing career.
But they're so, so rare from him.
- How many mistakes does he make in his career?
It's very difficult to think of very many.
Even to number on the fingers of one hand,
never mind two.
And somehow, he's just able to perform.
It shows a great mental capacity
to learn from those mistakes.
A bit like Formula One is dominated
by engineering and data;
this is his data up here, in his head.
He's become part of the most successful team
in Formula One.
I never thought anyone would be able to top
the Ferrari team of Michael Schumacher
in the noughties,
when he just went on that run of incredible success,
championship after championship after championship.
But Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton have done that,
and they've done it in a way
where some people say it's boring,
but you've got to applaud what they've done
because every company, every team,
in whatever sport, wants to achieve like they have done.
- Formula One champion, Lewis Hamilton.
- I'm really proud of what we've achieved as a team.
I'm proud of what we've done.
To go into a sixth year...
Well, it's my seventh year with the team,
but on the sixth year,
for us to to have fought for a world title
and been at the front,
and sustain the performance that we have collectively,
I think has been...
And then on the driving front,
I'm definitely very happy with
my performance this year.
I think there's areas I can improve on, for sure,
but that will never change.
The races are really where the championship was won,
but I think moreso the outside
of just being happier.
Happier in a collaboration with the team,
in terms of our teamwork,
the things that...
The doors that it opened,
in terms of doing the fashion,
that's been well-received and well-accepted.
And my fans have been amazing
in supporting me with it.
Being able to do those things
and it not be talked about too much,
in the sense of negative, "that's a distraction."
- People get a bit offended that he goes off
and does stuff with other people.
So he's more likely to go to Paris Fashion Week
than the Goodwood Revival,
but ultimately, they're kind of the same thing.
It's just one of them is more normalized
in the world that he exists in
or that they perceive him as existing in exclusively.
- I remember Bernie Ecclestone saying,
"You look at the value that Lewis Hamilton,
"for all his skills and all his attributes,
"look what he brings to the sport.
"He's not just a Formula One driver."
He brings more to the value
and the brand of Formula One
than someone like Nico Rosberg,
because he reaches out to a different audience,
a black audience.
He reaches out in music,
he does fashion,
he does veganism.
He's getting more active in terms of politics,
and diversity and inclusion.
- [Interviewer] So welcome to Brazil.
How are you feeling today?
- [speaking foreign language] Good morning.
- [Interviewer] [speaking foreign language] Thank you.
- Hi everyone, it's great to be here.
Most importantly, as I said,
I've just come from this great period of time
with my family and friends,
that I have this huge wave of positive energy,
and nothing can really dent that.
My goal, as a kid,
was always to do something, like Ayrton.
So I never even had imagined
what would be beyond that.
Just getting to accomplish something,
like Ayrton was already a huge feat.
- One of the guys that Lewis Hamilton always references
as someone who inspired him growing up is Ayrton Senna.
He was a three-time world champion.
He lost his life racing in 1994.
And Lewis was just starting out in karts at that point,
so he was aware of Senna,
of his style, of his skill,
and of the fact that he was killed behind the car,
and that affected him quite a lot, I think.
Lewis had a very similar helmet designed to Senna,
a bright yellow design,
which was actually to help his father pick him out
on the karting track when they were racing.
But it also showed that he was inspired
by what Ayrton did.
And Ayrton was another one of these drivers
who felt like he could use his position
to improve the world,
outside of Formula One,
but also his driving style was very similar to Lewis.
He was very aggressive, very attacking,
did everything on raw, natural feel,
and there's a lot of similarities between the two.
- I get that people will still go like,
"Oh, well you're a Formula One driver,
"how can you be an environmentalist?
"How dare you even talk about that?"
But it is something he believes in very strongly.
It's something that he educated himself about
relatively late in life.
- You see, I think it's always been an issue
and I think what's been...
Does it mean they're going to knock down trees?
Yeah, I mean, I'm not for that.
I think you've got such a beautiful country here.
- He wants to leave an environmental legacy.
He wants to leave a legacy
that transforms not just the sport,
but the world.
- Honestly, there's a lot of money
that goes into building one of these circuits.
You already have a historic circuit here.
It doesn't need to...
You don't need to cut any more rainforests down.
You don't have to damage any more land.
And I think the money could go
to a better cause here.
I think there's a lot more
the government can do with the money here,
for the infrastructure of this these cities.
You still have a lot of poverty within Brazil.
Again, I always question,
why can't it be sooner?
Why do we have to wait
for 10 more years of motor racing
for them to make the changes?
They've got the finances to implicate it as sooner,
the technology is there to make it sooner,
so why not?
- During the last news conference of the day,
the human rights issue over racing in Bahrain was, again,
a major talking point.
- Ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix in 2020,
a number of individuals wrote to Hamilton
to ask him to use his platform
to basically show that there were human rights abuses going
on in the country.
And there's a number of places
that Formula One races in
where there are questionable human rights records.
And one thing Formula One says it wants to do,
and it has a charter for this,
is to improve things,
is to help,
is to help educate people
or just try and make the situation better.
And Lewis came out and said
that having had these letters,
that he felt Formula One wasn't doing enough,
that it needed to be doing more.
And he wasn't quite so forthright
in terms of saying what needed to change,
but he did call out the sport itself
for not doing enough,
even though it said it wanted to.
At times, he's a spokesperson for the sport.
He is the most popular driver,
the most successful driver,
so for him to come out and say it meant
he knew people were going to listen.
- It's the first time I'd received letters
like that along my travels.
So I've taken, for the last...
The last few months,
taken time to try and educate myself
because coming here, all these years,
I wasn't aware of all of the detail
of the human rights issues.
- It's sort of a bit bittersweet.
The reason that Hamilton originally hadn't went
beyond the sport was because his place
within it was always a bit contested,
and he wasn't necessarily accepted fully
into its protective bubble.
But that has created an extraordinary star for Formula One,
and one that frankly, this sport
and the rest of us in it,
don't deserve a lot of the time.
- He's definitely transcended the sport
because he's not just about motor racing.
He's about fashion,
he's about music,
he's about political activism,
he's about veganism.
But he reaches out to all sorts of people
in the same way that Tiger Woods did;
a completely different, new animal
in the world of sport.
It's the Tiger effect, the Lewis effect.
People want to watch golf,
they want to get involved in golf
because of Tiger Woods.
Likewise, it's the same with Formula One.
They want to get involved because of Lewis Hamilton.
And he's done it in a way
that makes it accessible for more people.
- When Lewis talks about his position in Formula One
and his future within the sport,
he now looks at it in a very different way.
He's been very open about the fact
that he wants to change the sport
in terms of representation,
equality, opportunities,
and that he feels the best place for him to do that is
if he is a driver in the car
and people are still looking at him closely.
If he was on the outside, just saying,
"Things need to change,"
but he wasn't part of the sport anymore,
he doesn't feel like you'd have such a big influence.
So he feels it's important that
if he wants to change the sport,
he needs to be the heart of it,
leading that change
- In, in all honesty,
I don't do it for recognition.
I trained my whole life.
I think the most important people
when I got out of the race
and when I got home,
it's FaceTiming with my sister, my brother, my mom,
and my niece and nephew,
that was like...
And speaking to my dad and my stepmom, Linda.
Yes, I've won this seventh title
but we have another big, big fight to win,
and that's for racial equality across the board.
- I think it's very difficult to
necessarily explain to some people
because to say that Lewis Hamilton,
who is a multimillionaire,
who can effectively do what he wants,
he can walk away from his job tomorrow
and he can just do whatever he likes,
is in any way oppressed
or has suffered oppression.
People find that very hard to swallow as a fact,
but it is a fact.
- As a Formula One driver,
he's known around the world
for more than just driving a racing car,
and he felt that with that attention
and that platform,
he could really help to change the world
in different ways for the better.
- It's definitely been something
that Hamilton has become more enthusiastic
about thinking about
over the latter stage of his career.
If you look at a completely white sport
and then look at the world,
and call it a "global sport,"
and think, "Oh, there's nothing wrong with that."
No, that's completely incorrect.
There's an obvious problem there.
What it's become is a Western European touring facility.
- The sad fact is that he is
the only black driver Formula One
and for the foreseeable future,
that will stay the case.
So in a sense, Formula One and Motorsport generally has
still got a lot of work to do,
which is why his stance and his performance
and his words in 2020
in the light of the death of George Floyd
and everything that produced
around the world was so significant
and so important.
- He just wants to see
a wider range of people being able
to get opportunities within Formula One,
because at the moment it's a very male-dominated sport.
- This research that we're doing is trying
to understand why there is a lack
of young black kids applying to STEM subjects.
What are the barriers?
- I think we're going to look back at Lewis Hamilton
as the greatest Formula One driver we've ever seen,
and I think it will be beyond
just his racing abilities.
It will be his results,
it will be all the records he holds,
but it will also be the fact that he managed to do it
in a certain style,
he was entertaining to watch.
And he also forged his own path,
and then, off the track, tried to change things
for the better in his view, at the very least,
in the way that the wider world is.
And I think for someone to take that
all upon themselves,
and still be at the top of their game,
and still be able to produce the results he has,
is remarkable.
- Legacy is really important, I think,
to Lewis Hamilton.
He said he's not motivated,
like Schumacher said,
about titles and records and figures and so on,
and that's probably true.
But also, he is driven by this desire
to open up Formula One,
to open up motorsport,
to make a difference because otherwise,
if he can't do it, who can?
- But for me, growing up,
having people you see on TV
that could put a big smile on your face.
For me, I never really imagined
that I'll be able to do that to young kids.
- Hopefully I'll be racing Formula One for McLaren.
Anything with an engine, I really enjoy doing.
- All those years ago,
we were sitting in the back of a trailer,
in a little cavalier and everything,
we can never have imagined being in here, [mumbles].
When you get in that Formula One car,
everything just disappears
and it's the most amazing thing ever.
It's a real pleasure to see
the smile on people's faces
and to have pictures with everyone.
It's just a continuous, almost, job,
trying to keep everyone happy
and you can't make everyone happy,
and I want to try and live as normal life as possible.
Going over it in my mind,
what's the best thing for me?
And it's just gotten worse and worse,
obviously, because I've got bigger and bigger.
It's quite unreal.
But everyone has a dream,
and although I'm living my dream still,
there's more dreams,
there's more ambitions.
So that will keep me gunning for plenty of years to come.
[soft music]