The past never stops informing the future and the greats never forget their past. With seven titles under his belt, history echoes long for Lewis Hamilton as he enters the finale of a Formula One world championship balanced on a knife edge.
Hamilton has never forgotten how hard he had to work to come so far and how the character of the man who races in Abu Dhabi on Sunday was forged in the crucible of competition he experienced as a young karter. Back then there was no guarantee he would be the kid who made it but the traits that have brought him to such remarkable heights were unmistakable.
Hamilton can take a record eighth championship if he wins at the Yas Marina circuit. He is tied with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen on points. The pressure is immense, and it is instructive that heading into this season’s decisive races the world champion has been watching videos of some of his old karting competitions. “Those have been my favourite races,” he said. He admits that memories of many of his F1 races are hazy, while many of his battles in karting are still vivid.
Those years were hard but formative in both his long-term success and how he has faced down Verstappen’s challenge. Jonny Restrick was Hamilton’s mechanic in 1998 when the driver was 13 and even then saw a future champion in the personable but fiercely determined kid.
“We had races where things had gone wrong and his performances were phenomenal. He would find the next level,” Restrick says. “Today you think he is doing the best he can and then his back is against the wall and he finds that other level. There is not a bone in his body that would know how to give up.”
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Colin Brown experienced the sharp end of this fearsome combination of talent and resolve. Brown was a gifted karter, headhunted to race in Europe. A title-winner who raced from the age of 12, he took the Italian championship at the first time of asking when he went there in 1994, making his mark in competitive fields including factory drivers. In 2000 he came up against Hamilton in the Formula A class and it was touted as the two best young British drivers going head to head. Brown immediately recognised his opponent’s spirit.
“Sometimes you make a move on drivers, you mentally boss their minds, get in their heads so they become weak, they get nervous so they won’t overtake,” he says. “Lewis was the one kid I raced against who you could never do that to. I would pass him, look behind and he would come back at me. I thought: ‘I can’t get rid of this guy, no matter what I do he always comes back at me.’” This year Hamilton has shown the same steely strength of will. Verstappen tried to boss him but he was having none of it, ensuring the title fight has gone to the wire.
At the final race of the year in 2000, the World Cup at the Motegi circuit in Japan, Brown came from 52nd in qualifying after an engine problem, worked his way through the heats and started in third for the final. He and Hamilton vied for the lead throughout and Brown thought he had it only to leave a slender opening on the last lap. Hamilton shot up the inside and took the win. It was hard but Brown only admires the way Hamilton drove, with the sportsmanship he has displayed throughout his career.
“Considering I came from 52nd and led on the last lap, that is still really painful,” he says. “However, I am very proud to this day that I raced against Lewis. He was a very fair driver, not a dirty driver. If somebody pushed me about on track I would hit them up the arse, give them a little lesson. He never did that, he was never aggressive to the point that he would hit someone on the track, he was very, very fair.”
Two years earlier Restrick remembers a fun but humble Hamilton, a natural athlete, skilled with a football and with a golf club when the mechanics took him for his first swing at a driving range. He was no engineer but was relentless in his focus on anything that would make him go faster. His team, usually all packed into the Vauxhall Cavalier of his father, Anthony, were the first to arrive at the track and the last to leave. Even then Hamilton inspired those around him. “He motivated everybody to want to win,” says Restrick.
Restrick had considered putting on a bet that Hamilton would make it to F1, two years later win races and two years after that be champion. Yet Hamilton’s eventual rise occurred with even greater alacrity than he had foreseen. At the Fulbeck circuit in 1998 Restrick was watching him into turn one off the start. He expected the worst as he saw Hamilton lining up what appeared to be an impossible pass.
“I was thinking: ‘There’s no way that’s going to work,’ but he had read the situation and sent it,” he remembers. “He made several places in turn one. The hairs on my arms still stand up thinking of that move. The big thing was his ability to overtake, that was immediately apparent. By the end of the year I was as convinced as he was that he was going to F1. He never talked about ‘if’, all the conversation about the future was ‘when I am in Formula One’.”
Hamilton then began racing in Europe but Restrick could not follow due to university commitments. He went on to work in engineering and has now unpacked his tool box again to work with his son Jonty in karting. Still a fan, Restrick will be celebrating should Hamilton secure his eighth title. “It’s just great to see him do it and in my little way to have played a part in it,” he says.
Brown endured harder times and could not have veered further from Hamilton’s path. His racing career ground to a halt when he was misled by a management company who failed to find him a drive, and by his own admission he went off the rails and suffered severe depression. Now 39, he turned his life around after the birth of his daughter and coaches young karters. He too feels only pleased to have played a small role in Hamilton’s rich past on the eve of what might be his old rival’s greatest triumph.
“Some people could be bitter but I am the opposite,” he says. “When my daughter grows up I can tell her: ‘That’s the most famous race driver of all time and I raced him.’ I am just proud to have been on the track dicing with him, it’s nice to have been a part of that.”