Lewis Hamilton: Silverstone Has To Be on the Calendar

Lewis Hamilton says he’s more in love with Formula One right now than ever and that he cannot imagine a season without Silverstone in a Q&A from his official website that seems to be the big news of an incredibly slow weekend.

Although I do like Todd’s pick-up about Nick Heidfeld going to McLaren. If only I looked good in Macca colors.

This Hamilton interview has been floating around all weekend, but it still is showing up—probably for one of two reasons: 1. Hamilton is pretty bankable when it comes to people’s interests and 2. it is, as I said, slow out there in the F1 news world.

I thought Todd fairly successfully reacted to Sir Frank WIlliams’ comments by putting hit thoughts in between the questions. So here is the whole Q&A , only broken up—but nothing has been left out.

A few quick preliminary thoughts, though. I’m much less a “Hamilton hater” than many. I agree his father has done his son’s image a lot of hurt, and I certainly don’t “like” Anthony Hamilton. And Lewis has had a few immature moments that have made it easy to point at him and say he lucked his way into a great McLaren car and he’s presented himself at times in an polished and off-putting way. I also think his handling of “Lie-gate” to start the season was pathetic; he was old enough to make the right decision there.

But he can drive. And as I posted after Abu Dhabi, I think he finally started to show the maturity that could help bring him a handful, perhaps, of titles.

And I’ll wade into one other Lewis Hamilton issue. After having been to Monza and seeing the crowds and thinking of all the paddock photos I’ve seen, I am sure Lewis Hamilton has had to deal a lot with his race—in ways obvious to him and perhaps in ways less so.

I recognize that Northern Italy is not the most diverse area, but the crowd at Monza was speaking just about every European language there is. And that crowd was very white. I’ll take the leap that the crowds in Germany, Monaco, Hungary, Belgium, and other tracks are mostly white, as well, and don’t necessarily reflect the diversity of the cities and countries where those races are held.

Formula One is and has been an elite sport, from the “gentleman driver” days to today when you have to have millions and millions of dollars to participate. It is changing, and Hamilton—like him or not—is part of that changing landscape—whether he likes it or not, come to think of it.

I don’t mean to dive too deeply into this issue; I, just as Monza, was struck by what it must be like for Hamilton. We’ve seen the overt shows of racism; I’m more thinking about the less obvious signs that are there, just on the fringes.

And adding race into a mix that includes his overbearing dad, his immediate success at a top team, his relationship with Ron Dennis—well, I think Hamilton could have handled himself these past three years a lot worse given the situation he was in.

There—more context for my comments than you ever wanted. Here it Lewis, from his official site so it is a controlled interview without any tough follow-up questions.

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