Lewis Hamilton in his Ferrari SF-25 during 2025 Italian Grand Prix qualifying

Lewis Hamilton: F1's Winningest Driver Is Still Writing the Story

July 09, 2026

Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Formula 1 Driver Spotlight - where we pull one F1 driver into the garage and lay out their career, their numbers, and what makes them tick. This week: the number 44, Sir Lewis Hamilton.

The Short Version

Lewis Hamilton is the most successful driver in Formula 1 history. Seven world championships, 106 wins, 104 poles, 207 podiums, more career points than anyone who has ever sat in an F1 car. He spent 12 years turning Mercedes into a superteam, then walked away from all of it for the one seat he wanted since he was a kid: Ferrari. It took him a year and a half to win a race in red. In June 2026 at Barcelona, at 41 years old, he finally did it, and became the oldest Grand Prix winner in more than half a century.

Stevenage to the Grid

Lewis Hamilton was born on January 7, 1985, in Stevenage, England. His dad, Anthony, worked multiple jobs at once, IT manager, contractor, double-glazing salesman, dishwasher, to keep his son in go-karts. Lewis started karting at age six, and by ten he was the youngest British cadet karting champion ever. In 2000 he won both the karting World Cup and the European Championship in the same year.

McLaren signed him to its young driver program in 1998, when he was 13. He kept winning everywhere they put him: the 2003 Formula Renault UK title, the 2005 Formula 3 Euro Series title, the 2006 GP2 title in his first attempt. By the time McLaren put him in a Formula 1 car for 2007, the sport already knew what it was getting.

The Debut Season Nobody Has Matched

Hamilton's rookie year in 2007 is still one of the wildest debut seasons in F1 history. He made his first start at the Australian Grand Prix as the first Black driver in Formula 1, then reeled off nine straight podiums to open his career, a record that still stands. He led the championship as a rookie and lost the title by a single point on the final lap of the final race. A year later, in 2008, he won it anyway, snatching his first championship by passing Timo Glock on the last corner of the last lap in Brazil. He was 23. It made him the youngest world champion at the time and the first British champion since Damon Hill in 1996.

Building a Dynasty at Mercedes

Hamilton spent 2009 through 2012 racing hard at McLaren without another title, then made the move that reshaped the sport: he signed with Mercedes for 2013, a team that had not won a championship since the 1950s. It looked like a gamble. It was not. Starting in 2014, Hamilton and Mercedes went on an absolute run, six championships in seven years: 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, the last one tying Michael Schumacher's all-time record of seven titles. Along the way he passed Schumacher for the most wins and poles in history. The only year in that stretch he didn't win it, 2016, his own teammate Nico Rosberg beat him.

Career figures are Formula 1 totals through the 2026 British Grand Prix. Original Happy Hour Racing graphic.

The Ferrari Chapter

At the end of 2024, Hamilton did something almost no one expected from a driver with six titles' worth of leverage at the best team on the grid: he left. Ferrari had been his childhood dream team, the one he used to draw on his bedroom wall as a kid, and for 2025 he signed on to replace Carlos Sainz alongside Charles Leclerc. It did not go the way the fairy tale promised. The 2025 Ferrari was a tough, ground-effect car that never suited his driving style, and he went the whole season without a single podium in the championship, his first winless, podium-less year since he arrived in F1.

Then came 2026. Hamilton scored his first Ferrari podium at the Chinese Grand Prix, backed it up in Canada and Monaco, and on June 14 at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, he finally got the win. Ferrari gambled on an aggressive three-stop strategy, it played out perfectly, and Hamilton crossed the line 19.5 seconds clear of George Russell with Lando Norris third, the first all-British F1 podium since 1968. It was his 106th career win, his first for Ferrari, and it made him, at 41 years and five months old, the oldest Grand Prix winner since Jack Brabham won at Kyalami in 1970. Three weeks later at his home race at Silverstone, he finished third again and is now third in the 2026 championship, chasing a possible eighth title.

Here is how Formula 1's own account greeted it live on race day:

HE'S DONE IT! 🤩

LEWIS HAMILTON WINS THE BARCELONA-CATALUNYA GRAND PRIX! 🏆🎉#F1 #BarcelonaGP pic.twitter.com/CJXPE33yE9
— Formula 1 (@F1) June 14, 2026

Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari during first practice at the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix — Hamilton's Ferrari during first practice for the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix, the season before his maiden win for the team. (Photo: Liauzh, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Off the Track

Hamilton grew up the only Black kid at his local karting club and has talked openly about the racist abuse and bullying he faced as a child, part of why he took up karate at age five. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2021 and now goes by Sir Lewis Hamilton. Off the track he is a vocal advocate for diversity in motorsport, an animal rights and environmental campaigner, a vegan, and a genuine fashion figure who has become a fixture at the Met Gala. He is close with his half-brother Nicolas Hamilton, also a professional racing driver, and he still talks about his dad's years working multiple jobs to keep him karting as the foundation of everything that came after.

The Bottom Line

Lewis Hamilton is already the most decorated driver Formula 1 has ever had, and at 41 he is still adding to a resume no one else in the sport's history can match. The Ferrari move was a real risk for a driver who had already won everything there was to win, and for a year and a half it looked like it might not work out. Barcelona changed that story. He is not chasing a legacy anymore. He is still racing for wins, in real time, in red.