Whether You Know It Or Not, Sir Lewis Hamilton Is Your Favorite Driver

They say a flower is beautiful because it doesn't last. I'd say a flower is beautiful because it's unexpected. In fields and fields of grass and trees there are rarely flowers. It's as if it were a gift delivered precisely in case anyone would evolve long enough to admire it. It is the incentive for living built into our natural world. 

When it comes to sports, our perception of them is built on flowers. It's the striking, the colorful, and the unexpected. While it might take and entire lifetime to live through a couple hundred of these flowers, they are the verbal conversations that allow us legitimacy when talking about our own experiences with sports. Not a single NBA fan will ever forget the 2016 NBA finals, and no fan of F1 will ever forget Michael Schumacher crossing the line in Suzuka in 2004. These are permanent memories. 

However, flowers have their sizes. Their shapes, their colors and their unique aromas. They are not always upright, and some are much taller than others. In certain cases, especially in the US, flowers grow so tall that we commemorate them. We put badges on them such as 'national holidays' or award ceremonies with their names on it. Those are flowers that transcend sports. The kind of wildlife indigenous more to the history books than the ESPN highlights channel. Sometimes its not about the vehicle, the ball, or the shot made; it's about the conversation surrounding it. These snapshots of human progress encapsulated in a highly dramatized, irregular set of actions. 

For any fan of F1, this moment in time is one of those. It needs no flagging, it's at an absolute fever pitch. The collision of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and the 2020 marches for Black Lives Matter indicate an intersection etched into a history severely lacking in the sort of flowers that become landmarks. For 76 years F1 has been a haven for the white and wealthy. Its name synonymous with the post-WW2 death built of the backs of dead working-class soldiers. The mere image of rich white men racing through Monte Carlo just 5 years after the utter destruction of Europe and East and South East Asia is a memorable stain on the very idea of the top level of motorsport. To suggest F1 has a problem with racism is to suggest that a farmer with a field of wheat may suspect a horde of locusts to come charging every couple of years. Inevitable. 

When you watch compliations of F1's greatest moments and see Senna, Schumacher, Mansell, Hunt. Lauda etc. at the top of the podium it's easy to become enamored with the idea that this sport truly pulls for all of humanity. Ever since stories of John Henry outpacing the woodcutting machine, human beings have long wished to out-compete machines. Though obviously the driver and car work in tandem, the most memorable moments come from when the vehicle fails and the man prevails. Senna's Lotus stuck in 6th gear at Interlagos, Sir Lewis Hamilton reaching the finish on three wheels at Silverstone in 2020, or even the death defying nature of lapping a Formula One car before the 1990s. The baseline conversation behind the pursuit of motorsports is: 'how far can machine push man before man can no longer reply'. And so far, it has been so good. With the benefit of clearly guiding regulations, human beings have naturally reached their summit. They have as always come out on top. Doing the previously impossible year in and year out. Every innovation, every outstanding drive, every inch further than the rest of the field shows that humans are still at the top of their game. 

And so, much like sports such as the UFC, or professional track and field there are subconscious elements to F1 that make it an attractive prospect to anyone who might see themselves behind that visor. It's supposed to be reflective. Despite the lack of a face during the race however, there are interviews, media appearances, podium celebrations and those dampen the idea of a universal human condition. The ultimate struggle for F1 is inherent in its history. It's a sport for the uber-wealthy. It's an insular community. It is, in a sense, rigged. Much like the intersection between capitalism and race, F1 appears to see itself above that. Claiming solely to be a sport of numbers, when in reality it's a sport of dollars and privilege. So many drivers have come and gone, and to the chagrin of fans there are entire categories of drivers banished from conversations of true talent and greatness. These are stains on the competitive integrity of the sport. Drivers such as Roberto Mehri, Rio Haryanto, Nicholas Latifi, or Sergey Sirotkin. People with talent lesser than the demands of the sport, and yet accepted among the rest as equals. To anyone's aspirational eye this is simply unacceptable. But when one takes a wider look at things it seems obvious that the difference between these two are much smaller than the difference between your average road driving teenager and someone like Lando Norris. Norris, now 22, grew up the son of a billionaire. His father awarded him infinite amounts of time at the local track, top of the line equipment, and more strikingly, the peace of mind to pursue his passion without any fear of failure. 

One might notice the impurity with which he now competes in front of fans. Fan pages spring up and cheer on his every move. People argue for his competitive and career success, and when he finished near the top of the field it is noticed and catalogued away as a validation of his integral human qualities. Then again, how many of us when put in that same position would have arrived at the same outcome. From an outside perspective, it lowers the magical factors when you realize that an F1 career is cash and confidence. There are some willing to overlook this, but when it comes to comparison, there really aren't any worth mentioning. A single year in Norris' title winning World Karting Championship kart would've run you on average $400,000. It's worth an entire house in most of America to send your child through one year of competitive go-karting at the highest level. There's no argument when it comes to performance and privilege. The latter will always push you further down the track. 

The idea that F1 is a human-driven sport begins to fall apart as soon as you realize the real price of getting there. But not only that, when you only allow a very specific minority into a sport, you create a fundamental in-group. In this case, it's the same people who run your country clubs, manage the portfolios of the biggest investors in the world, and those that own the ships that move your goods. It's the billionaires already swimming in a tempestuous cyclone of wealth. To disrupt this flow is simple insurmountable. It is climbing Mount Everest with a fork and knife instead of an ice pick and an oxygen mask. Then, if after all that, what if I were to tell you the story of one young man. 

This young boy grew up with divorced parents without the financial means to send their child to private school. This family worked three jobs to set their child up with a kart capable of going around a track. And his genius showed at a young age. He drove RC cars faster than adults. He went to events as frequently as anyone else. He was truly a genius in his class. This man grew up and was noticed by the biggest driver academy in the world at that time. Nurtured by a man who had won more championships than any other boss in his field. He grew up racing and never stopped. Though he's certainly not the everyman, he's an example of what F1's premise is meant to be. 

Sir Lewis Hamilton knows what it's like to be excluded. From a young age, racial abuse flew from paddocks around his local tracks. People were unhappy to see their bubble broken. A young boy with brown skin and a single father had never been able to make it through the rank and file numbers of white middle-class families. There was a fence there by a different name. And yet, this shy, quiet, young boy climbed it through merit alone. 

At the end of Sir Lewis Hamilton's career there must be a signpost put up indicating to any new fan that something happened for the past 14 years that has never happened before. This man took the shadow of a post-WW2 wealth boom built of the backs of his own ancestors and used it as a platform to become the most successful driver in the history of the world. That is the kind of story movies would be scared to tell. It's magnanimous, it's triumphant, and most of all it's likely to not happen again while the people alive to read this are still alive. Sir Lewis Hamilton is an expression of the guilt that F1 has been trying to stifle for years. It's a tear in a seemingly unbreakable set of armor. A glitch in the Matrix, and a reminder that athletics are simply a prism through which we can attempt to understand our own lives. If you aren't a fan of Sir Lewis Hamilton look again, because you should, will, and eventually might see yourself in his eyes. This is bigger than F1. It's bigger than sport.