Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton MBE (born in Stevenage; 7 January 1985) is a British Formula One racing driver from England, currently racing for the McLaren Mercedes team and is the youngest ever Formula One World Champion. He was named after the American sprinter Carl Lewis.
At the age of ten Lewis approached the McLaren team principal, Ron Dennis, at the 1995 Autosport Awards ceremony and told him "I want to race for you one day." Less than three years later, he was signed by McLaren and Mercedes-Benz to their Young Driver Support Programme. After winning the British Formula Renault, European Formula Three and GP2 championship in 2006, he became a McLaren F1 driver for 2007, making his Formula One debut 12 years after his initial encounter with Dennis. Coming from a mixed-race background, with a black father and white mother, Hamilton is often labelled "the first black driver in Formula One"
Hamilton's mother, Carmen Larbalestier (now Carmen Lockhart) is white British, while his paternal grandparents emigrated from Grenada to the United Kingdom in the 1950s, his grandfather (Oliver Hamilton) working on the London Underground.[4] Hamilton's parents separated when he was two and he lived with his mother and half-sisters Nicola and Samantha until the age of twelve, when he started living with his father, stepmother Linda and half-brother Nicholas who has cerebral palsy.
