Favorite Coach Race Drivers: Lewis Hamilton Car News

The brief was simple. An email to all journalists on Autocar: choose your favorite racing driver of all time.

What we weren’t expecting was a whole repertoire of answers that came back. Covering most eras and a wide spectrum of sport – from Formula 1 to club racing – it shows how diverse motorsport and its followers are. For once, there are no wrong answers: it has sparked a lot of discussion and quite a bit of disbelief, but in the end, it’s all about personal choice.

Do you agree with us? Would you like to choose someone different? Let us know in the comments below.

Lewis hamilton

Growing up, I was never a fan of a particular racing team or a particular racing driver. With other sports, of course, I would support “my” team. But with the racing teams and the drivers, I wasn’t that worried.

If they were nice it helped, and if they were British it even better. But I just liked people who were quick and fair and who smiled a bit. After all, having different winners always made racing more interesting.

Then Damon Hill came along, and that all changed for me. This is someone I wanted to win every time he got in a car. After his retirement, I reverted to those old neutral ways. Until, that is, Lewis Hamilton gets into a McLaren and starts beating people up. I haven’t wanted him to stop since.

I regularly watch the Australian Supercars Championship. It costs around £ 35 per season to stream it in the UK and I devour every practice, qualifying session and race. I like all pilots; they are good, honest, relaxed, funny and fair runners. But I never want any of them to absolutely dominate the sport.

With Sir Lewis Hamilton, it’s different. Seven championships? Aim for 10. 96 race wins? Make it 150. I am, unequivocally, a fan. I don’t care how dominant he and the Mercedes he helped develop is, I want to see him up front.

Why is it? Partly because when he was growing up his home go-kart track, Rye House, was also mine. He’s now racing for Mercedes, eight miles from my home. So he’s a ‘local’ boy (yeah, I know he lives in Colorado).

I like the fact that he has something to say and that he thinks he should do it. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to win all these championships and have all this success and not use it to make a change,” he told Netflix documentary Drive To Survive last year. And I love that he’s backing it with action: his Hamilton commission is working with the Royal Academy of Engineering to engage black youth with subjects and careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM ). Anyone who promotes engineering – the subject I have chosen to study – has a place in my heart.