Lewis Hamilton on Life, F1 and Everything Else

“Affecting someone’s life in a positive way… I’ve had people coming up to me… A woman ran up to me when I went to this musical one time and she was like, ‘Oh my god, I just wanted to tell you, in 2007 I was going through cancer and chemo, and you got me through it.’ And I’m like ‘How?’ And she said, ‘Well, every weekend I saw you get in that car and the way you drove, the way you spoke, I connected with you and I was powering through it with you.’

“I was like wow, I had no idea. She was standing there six or seven years later, and she’d got through it, and she said she couldn’t have got through it without you. It’s hard to grasp that and to imagine what she is going through, but she grabbed on to something and that was maybe this young kid coming from nowhere but facing adversity, somehow fighting through it. She somehow put those together.

“That’s definitely worth fighting for, that’s definitely worth dying for, if you can touch one kid and put them on course for their potential… that’s definitely worth fighting for.”

Lewis Hamilton reminisced the time he crashed his McLaren at the Nurburgring in his rookie season. A tyre had failed and he hit the barriers hard, head-on. He spoke about how he deals with such extreme eventualities.

“You don’t have time to pray. Anything can happen any day, but I feel God has his hand over me. You are just bracing… But still, nothing is a given and there’s nothing that’s written that says I am going to live until 100 years old, or that I will live to see my next birthday. So, I tell you what, I am just going to make sure I get everything in between now and the next day.”

“When I posted things, whether I’ve been flying private or something, it was never ever to put it in someone’s face. It was more to show people what’s possible. I grew up in Stevenage on a council estate, living on my dad’s couch. If anything, it was really, really to try and show that it is possible. But, in today’s society, I think everyone wants everything now. As we all do, when I was young I was like ‘I want to be an F1 driver now’ and it took 20 bloody years to get there. It’s really just to show to people there are possibilities…”

The 4-time F1 world champion has long been criticised for his fashion and music pursuits. Some view it as spending too much time on these ‘distractions’ in between races. But, the leisure time is a crucial part of recovery and recharging.

“Formula One has given me a life, given me a purpose, which is pretty special,” he says, “But F1 has also broken me… it’s broken me and built me, broken me and built me.

“When you go through it, you put so much into it, it breaks your heart and kills you when you fail, when you stumble, when everyone’s watching when you stumble. But, when you get back up and when you succeed, it lifts you up. You fall and you break a bone, you heal and you keep going.

“It’s the passion for what you do and the will to succeed. It’s just something that’s hard to express, but everyone has it in some shape or form.