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Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Lewis Hamilton smashed down the barriers

By Kevin Garside, Chief Sports Writer

Standard bearer:  Lewis Hamilton celebrates becoming the youngest Formula One world champion
Standard bearer: Lewis Hamilton celebrates becoming the youngest Formula One world champion Photo: GETTY IMAGES

A month on from the most thrilling championship conquest in the history of four-wheeled combat we are still taking the sedatives.

Dream sequences are peppered with screams from Interlagos: "He's got Glock!" Dawn breaks over icy December mornings posing the question, did he really do that?

Hamilton has been in Formula One for two minutes. He has won and lost the world drivers' championship by a point. No one has made an impact like him. From record rookie to youngest world champion. Sporting personality? How much do you want?

McLaren have done their best to package him, to mould him into the consummate corporate brand ambassador; polite, humble, available, non-contentious. Then he gets behind the wheel and the chain comes off.

Eight laps from home in the final race of 2008 he is coasting to the title. Six laps later he is losing it. At the penultimate corner he rises out of the water like the Loch Ness monster devouring Timo Glock in one almighty lunge for the line.

This, surely, is what we want from our heroes; fearless shooters who hang everything out in the name of glory. Hamilton engaged every last drop of human capacity to reclaim a pot that was being held aloft in the Ferrari garage when Felipe Massa crossed the line.

The Brazilian was three corners into his lap of honour before news drifted across the Ferrari airwaves that Formula One had its youngest world champion.

Massa, like Roger Federer at Wimbledon, grew in defeat. While Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo was putting his boot into a television set, Massa was paying tribute to worthy champion and adversary.

Hamilton came into the 2008 season still dealing with 2007. In his debut year he had to contend with a hormonal team-mate and a political scandal that saw McLaren expelled from the constructors' championship, yet he still led the thing until the chequered flag fell in Brazil.

A win in this season's opener at Melbourne was posted under scrutiny even sharper than the year before. It also masked a degree of personal turbulence that had either been absent or simply missed in that absurd debut season.

Nothing was missed in the second. Every twist and turn was tossed into the critical shredder. A reluctant wheel nut cost him dearly in Malaysia and a button hit out of sequence on the grid in Bahrain saw him end the race pointless. Suddenly Hamilton appeared all of his 23 years; inexperienced and vulnerable.

We were into the downward phase of the creative cycle, deconstructing the phenomenon we had built the year before. Mistakes could never be that, they had to point to some defect, some imperfection, some failing.

Victory in Monaco in the wet, universally acclaimed as one of the great drives on the waterfront, brought some respite, but a needless pit lane shunt into the back of Kimi Raikkonen in Canada unleashed the attack dogs again.

The French Grand Prix was a career nadir. The Hamilton camp was at odds with the world following the hammering he had taken in Canada. A time penalty imposed following an over eager passing move on Sebastien Vettel compounded the 10-place grid penalty he carried over from North America. Hamilton left France pointless and seemingly unravelling.

Next up Silverstone. The tension could not have been greater. Hamilton needed a big result to resurrect his championship challenge and his reputation. The evidence of his first 20-odd races, in which for the most part he had demonstrated rare brilliance, was being discounted in the light of a few schoolboy errors.

Hamilton delivered, as he always has when the heat is on. He won. His critics were in flight. They did not have much to say at the next race in Germany, where again he won emphatically, or China, where he lacerated the field while contending with the open contempt of rivals who accused him of arrogance. And then he gave us Brazil.

Hamilton took a bulldozer to the rookie template. His was the most anticipated debut in the history of the sport. There was no poodling about in a Minardi for 12 months, no year as a test driver, no midseason bow in an underpowered jalopy. He was sent immediately to the front line

His achievements are astonishing by any measure. When you add in the socio-political dimension, the case for Formula One's first black world champion to be acclaimed Britain's pre-eminent sportsman, even in Olympic year, is difficult to resist. F1 is not replete with council-estate kids from Stevenage, still less with those carrying chromosomes out of Africa.

There remains one racial stereotype still to put to bed. The first black Dr Who. Following the denouement he engineered in Brazil, worthy of any cosmic doctor, you wouldn't bet against Hamilton pulling that off, too. Would you?

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