Can Hamilton produce another Singapore magic moment?

Ten years ago, the atmosphere in the paddock in Singapore was electric as Lewis Hamilton’s plans for the future sparked the Formula 1 media pack. I was part of the BBC’s broadcasting team at that time and had heard the news direct from our pundit Eddie Jordan. It was a prediction he’d made at the previous race at Monza and which was confirmed a couple of days after Singapore: Lewis was leaving McLaren for Mercedes.

While Hamilton was keeping quiet about his discussions with a new team, his style on the night-time street track was as accomplished as ever. He took pole position and was leading the race for McLaren when a gearbox failure sapped his chances for the title, dropping him from second to fourth in the points. It was a significant Singapore outing (Niki Lauda later claimed it was the gearbox issue which tipped Lewis’s choice in favour of Mercedes), but there were more to come.

One such moment came several years later, and it related closely to the original contract discussions in 2012. Hamilton has always had other interests – passions outside F1 which have helped him develop a way of living that has suited his style. As he arrived in Singapore in 2018, he was leading the championship by 30 points but had also spent 10 days since Monza immersed in another sphere.

It was the first year his association with international fashion star Tommy Hilfiger had led to a joint collection. Leading up to that Singapore race, Hamilton was involved in promotional activities in Shanghai and then New York. Off the back of those travels and commitments, he was back behind the wheel at the unforgiving Marina Bay Street Circuit – and on the Saturday he delivered one of his most personally significant pole positions. He smashed the previous year’s pole time by three seconds and leapt to a level way beyond the team’s ideal-lap computer predictions. Despite widespread criticism of his so-called off-track ‘distractions’, he shone brighter than ever. And he knew this meant a lot.

Hamilton’s disastrous 2012 Singapore race swung momentum in favour of his Mercedes move

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In a recent interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Lewis described how in 2012 he had set out to Mercedes his fundamental need to have the freedom of living life to the full: “This is who I am. These are the things I like to do,” he explained to the team. Six years later, he continued to prove it by immersing himself in fashion and style, then delivering on track. “And I did the best lap I’d ever put together,” he confirmed.

The Mercedes team was stunned by that lap. James Allison, technical director at the time, said it was a breathtaking performance. Team boss Toto Wolff called it surreal. The lap has remained with Hamilton as one with special significance: proof that living his life to the full allows him to deliver his best.

Other champions may have had different approaches, yet their clarity of thought and understanding of what they need to make everything work has frequently come from an early time in their lives. Both Lewis and fellow multiple world champion (and knight of the realm) Jackie Stewart had to deal with dyslexia at school and suffered as a result. “Teachers were telling me ‘You’re never going to be nothing,’” recalls Lewis. Jackie suffered similarly in the 1950s.

While Hamilton hasn’t been in the fight for the title this season, it has reinforced his dedication to F1. Whether he can repeat that lap of 2018 and the subsequent victory in Singapore is an open question

“Everyone was saying I was dumb, stupid and thick,” wrote Jackie in his autobiography Winning is Not Enough. “The teachers said so, and other children said so in the playground – and in the absence of any other explanation, I started to feel they must be right.”

They both also experienced not just verbal but physical abuse. Jackie’s loss of confidence left him spending time in some bleaker parts of his community. One day at the age of 14 he was attacked by a bunch of youngsters.

“The attack was brutal and brief and not more than a minute later, I was left lying on the pavement a few yards away from my bus stop with a fractured collarbone, three cracked ribs and a broken nose.”

Both Hamilton and Stewart came through childhood hardships to become F1 world champions

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For Lewis, the additional effect of racism struck him at the younger age of 11, when a walk to the shops in Newcastle ended in him being beaten up by a father and son who were shouting “Go back to your country”.

For both Lewis and Jackie, difficult times during their childhood and teenage years were balanced and sometimes obliterated by achievements elsewhere. Lewis was winning with remote-controlled cars and then karts from an early age, while Jackie discovered he had a talent for clay pigeon shooting when he was 13. Both were able to achieve things others were unable to match, and they found a path to lift themselves to a higher level, especially behind the wheel of an F1 car. As Jackie said, “Dealing with these problems made me very much more determined than I might otherwise have been.”

For Lewis, becoming one of F1’s all-time record breakers has allowed him to open up and be proud of what he has achieved, as well as continue at an incredible level both on track and in different aspects of his life, such as increasing diversity and awareness while also enjoying his own personal passions.

While Hamilton hasn’t been in the fight for the title this season, it has reinforced his dedication to F1. Whether he can repeat that lap of 2018 and the subsequent victory in Singapore is an open question. But his efforts will be as intense and heartfelt as ever.

Hamilton's performance at the 2018 Singapore GP remains one of the greatest of his career

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images