Does anyone like lewis hamilton

That stigma of difference, of aloneness, of unbelonging. For Hamilton, racing was never just racing, but its own quiet act of defiance. By the same token, winning could never merely be winning. It would be his vengeance on a sport, and a system, that always expected him to know his place. And so he kept winning. He is a near-certainty to draw level with Schumacher by winning his seventh world championship in the coming weeks.

Yet for a serial winner, record-breaker and trailblazer — still the only black driver ever to have raced in the year history of the sport — Hamilton remains a polarising figure in this country. Some despise him; some are merely apathetic. Some grumble that he merely drives the fastest car, or that his enduring excellence somehow embodies the joylessness of F1, a sport that feels more technocratic and less human with every passing year. Others complain about his many extracurricular interests, from fashion design to his budding music career.

Others quibble with his environmental stances, his veganism, his vocal support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Others that he lives in the tax haven of Monaco and takes more than flights a year. So, will Lewis Hamilton ever be fully embraced by the Great British public? The public vote which awarded him his second Sports Personality of the Year trophy this month suggests that the driver does enjoy considerable support out there.

Perhaps it is simply that his critics make more noise than the silent majority which admires Hamilton and respects his achievements as a racing driver. Would another title silence the doubters? Probably not, but we can certainly hope that when the time comes for him to step away from the sport, the public will unite in acclaiming him as one of the greatest Formula One drivers of all time. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Only players above the age of 18 are permitted to play our games. Underage gambling is an offence. In Play Information and Scores are for guidance only and may be subject to delays. Hamilton became the first F1 rookie in a decade that had a legitimate chance at winning the World Championship. So why wouldn't anybody want to see a rookie fight it out with his double world champion team mate against the on rush of Ferrari scarlet in the forms of Kimi and Massa? Lewis managed to restore national pride to the F1 realm of the UK, having been disappointed at the efforts of Anthony Davidson, David Coulthard, and of course, Jenson Button.

Having longed for a return to the days of "Our Nige," it seems their waiting has paid off. Now all 's season is about how it is Lewis' title to lose, since he should have won it in ' Damn the FIA and their damn agenda. Hamilton has been gifted one of the best seats in F1 and he didin't seem to appreciate who he was racing next to, nor who he was racing against. First of all, De La Rosa deserved that seat and not the year-old rookie that may have been suited for a test role in order to learn the ropes.

Alonso was brought on board to help McLaren over the top and finally get back what they believed should have been theirs in , a world drivers and constructors championship. Yet again, Ron Dennis has shown how he cannot manage Latin drivers. It became pretty obvious after the qualifying incident who Dennis was pushing for to win the WDC.

It was only through the infighting between the McLaren drivers that Ferrari was able to secure the Driver's championship. And the complaining? C'mon, Lewis, you should have known what you were getting into when you pull up wheel to wheel against Alonso at Spa. He'd just wanted to. Last year, according to Buxton, " When he turned up in New York for a two-minute appearance on the Today Show , he arrived two hours early and spent every spare moment engaged with his fans.

He was the champion and got paid money for that, and these guys think their only job is racing a racing car. It goes a bit further than that. Hamilton does go a bit further, giving us a glimpse at his life away from the paddock through Twitter and Instagram, but then people complain about that, too.

A few weeks ago, I was speaking about Carlos Pace with Andrea de Adamich, who raced for Ferrari , McLaren and a few other teams in the late s and early s. He made the point a few times about how well-rounded Pace was, always interested in life outside the artificial world of F1. De Adamich said the only current driver who struck him that way was Nico Rosberg, Hamilton's team-mate.

On the podium recently, in Japan and Brazil, Hamilton greeted the crowd in their own language. This may seem like a gimmick, designed to elicit applause, but it is also a sign of respect from Hamilton to the fans of the sport. Like Buxton wrote, he doesn't have to do that. He wants to. But of course, Hamilton drew fire for another podium incident earlier this year, at the Chinese Grand Prix, when he sprayed one of the hostesses with some champagne.