Lewis Hamilton – Hollywood Story

Lewis Hamilton’s childhood and rise to formula 1 is a story right out of Hollywood. His parents divorced when he was two and he spent 8 years with his mom and step dad. At the early age of six he showed a strong interest around everything automotive. Both his father, who visited often, and his mother took notice of this, and for his eighth birthday his father managed to scavenge together 1000 pounds to buy Lewis his own kart. Lewis and his father went regularly to the go kart track and Lewis immediately showed potential and started to race competitively. At the age of 10 he moved in with his father and his step mom to become a professional racer. Anthony promised to Lewis that he would make him world champion if he promised to keep his grades up. Lewis’ father Anthony took three jobs to support Lewis’ competitive racing at the start, but in 2001 when Lewis was 16 he had success in an internet business and was able to fully support Lewis. Lewis’ big break came when he met “Big Ron” Dennis, the boss at McLaren, and he said to Ron that he would race for him one day, and three years after their first meeting Lewis was signed to the formula 1 development programme, where 5 million pounds was spent on his training, and after a few successful years in formula 3 and GP2 Lewis was offered a job as the second driver, behind Fernando Alonso, for the McLaren formula 1 team. Lewis had to make many sacrifices during his childhood. He was not able to make many friends because he was always busy with racing and was never around to spend time with his peers. He had to fight racism throughout his life and even became a black belt at the age of 12 to defend himself from bullying.