Lewis Hamilton on dealing with fame, adversity and the media spotlight
— -- One decade ago Lewis Hamilton was preparing for his first season in Formula One. Within motor racing circles his talent had been recognised, but away from the track he was still relatively unknown. His whole life up to that point had been about chasing his boyhood dream of racing in Formula One and, ultimately, emulating the achievements of his great hero Ayrton Senna. Ten years, 49 race wins and three world championships later, Hamilton has achieved his goals.
"For sure, I never imagined it would be like it is," he told ESPN in an exclusive interview which took place before the Japanese Grand Prix. "I never imagined my life would be like this. I'd sat watching the grands prix on TV and imagined what it would be like being in that garage like Ayrton Senna, I'd try to imagine it, but my wildest imagination didn't sum up to what it is.
"Generally everything has turned out to be bigger and better ... but also different. When I was dreaming of being a racing driver I didn't think of all the things that came with it. I'd only contemplated driving the car and being in that garage and being on track.
"It hadn't even entered my mind all the things that surround it outside the garage and the team -- maybe I wasn't smart enough back then, but I hadn't thought about those things. Those were probably more of a surprise when they came along."
For Hamilton there was no real time to adapt to the changes that Formula One brought upon his life. He fought for the title in his very first year in the sport and the immediate success brought with it immediate fame. By the end of his first season, and at just 23 years of age, Hamilton released his first autobiography and became the public face of his team's many sponsors. In the space of a year he was suddenly a national sporting hero, and in the ten years since has gone on to become a global superstar.
"Life has changed a lot," he says. "I went from being a little nobody-kid in Stevenage to people noticing me in places, so for sure things have changed a lot. I also went from being a very timid, more nervous person to a more confident, more assured and more successful person. Lots has changed but ultimately I'm still the kid that I was back then.
"It just makes me smile because I think of all the people that said I wouldn't, said I couldn't, said I wasn't good enough. They sometimes pop up in the back of my mind and it makes me smile remembering what they made me feel like at the time in order to make themselves feel great, you know what I mean? They put someone down, said that I'm nothing, and now, with what I've turned into and who I am, it makes me smile and feel at peace. Whatever negative they put in and installed in me is at peace because I've corrected it and balanced it."
Inevitably, growing up in the media spotlight has generated both positive and negative headlines. Hamilton is a personality like no other in Formula One and increasingly his activities away from the race track have attracted as much interest as his performances on it. His extensive use of social media provides a window to his remarkable lifestyle, through which both fans and critics can't help but gaze.
In the days following our interview, Hamilton took offence to the way certain publications reported his use of Snapchat during a routine press conference and at the next opportunity politely informed the media he would no longer be taking their questions. It was just the latest chapter in a turbulent relationship with the press that stretches back throughout his F1 career.
"Growing up in the public eye is a difficult thing and there are a lot of pitfalls," he says. "I've had great people around me who have tried to protect me from falling into them, but even today I still fall in them -- it's just that I care less. If I do nowadays, it is what it is and it's fun. As long as it's light-hearted then it's OK and you can still grow from it."
Unlike many of his rivals, Hamilton has never attempted to guard his emotions in public. Speaking immediately after an engine failure cost him a crucial victory in Malaysia last month, his emotions appeared to get the better of him and he called on his Mercedes team to come up with an answer. He later clarified his remarks and pledged his support to the team, but by that time a large proportion of social media had donned its tin-foil hats and started work on conspiracy theories to explain the failure. The emotions that create such outbursts from Hamilton can be damaging, but he claims they are also linked to the very foundations of his talent.
"Every now and then I've seen people have an opinion about how emotional I get; like I should be more happy even when I've lost," he says. "But I think people that comment on that forget how heavily invested I am in this sport. It's the same for anyone whatever they are doing, it's about how much investment they have put in, and my heart has been invested in this for 23 years.
"This has been part of my life since I was eight and it is literally an extension of my life and my body. It's really odd, but I feel it. I guess that's why I'm good at what I do, because I don't just drive with my head, I feel it in my heart, I feel it my chest, I feel it in my abs, I feel it in my butt, I feel it in my neck, I feel everything. That's why I love it, because there is nothing else that I do that feeds all that and I can get those feelings from."
Prior to the Malaysian Grand Prix, Hamilton had shown impressive control over his emotions. At the opening five rounds of the season two MGU-H failures and two poor starts saw him fall 43 points behind teammate Nico Rosberg in the drivers' standings, only to fight back over the following seven races to score six wins and take a 19-point lead ahead of the summer break. Had it not been for a mammoth grid penalty at the Belgian Grand Prix -- a hangover from the earlier reliability issues -- he may have continued his winning streak after the summer break and be leading the championship, but instead he has been unable to regain his momentum.
"People talk about getting on a roll and stuff and undoubtedly it's true, but when you do it you try not to think about that -- it's just like you're going from one positive to another. It's like rock climbing, every time you make the next step and got to the next one it's like a confidence thing that builds inside you. Sometimes you miss the next one and you can't get further up the wall, but the important thing is you always try again. When I'm on that wall that's what I do, I always shake it off and try again.
"You can use so many different metaphors in life to describe the way I attack these things, but in the past I would often leave a race like Malaysia and struggle a lot more with dealing with it and generally dwelling on things. It's the same as when you are in a relationship and if you dwell on an argument, it's similar emotions. But eventually you just learn to take the positives from it and leave the s--- behind. If anything, it's benefitted my life a huge amount.
"It's also about trying not to waste days, because we only have a certain amount of days in our lives and every day you spend moping around is one less day you have. We take it for granted how many days we have, but I was listening to a song the other day, I think it was Alicia Keys, and it said the average days we have is 28,000 or something like that. I calculated how many days I had lived and it was nearly half of that! I was like 'Shoot! I need to get living!'
In the last ten years alone Hamilton has lived a remarkable life. He's earned his millions, travelled the world and reached the prime of his Formula One career. But it is the journey that has taken him to that point that Hamilton says he values most.
"We are all faced with adversity at some stage in our life and it's how you deal with it that counts. I think for people who have just started tuning into Formula One or have just started following me, they probably have no idea about the grassroots of the sport that I came up through, they probably just think I drive for a top team, have a great car and they won't know the foundation on which I perform. But really what I do today is almost minuscule compared to the journey that I took to get here. That was Mount Everest and now I'm at the top and dancing around."
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