Lewis Hamilton

Name: Lewis Hamilton

Nationality: Great Britain

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• Lewis Hamilton

Just one season into his F1 career and Lewis Hamilton is already being billed as a future multiple World Champion.

Lewis began his motorsport career in karts in 1995 when he crowned the Super One British Champion as well as the STP Champion. It was the start of a dominance that would encompass all the series he would enter.

The following year, still in the Cadet Class, he won the Sky TV Kart Masters as well as the Five Nations.

1996 also began his association with his future employer, Lewis winning the McLaren-Mercedes Champions of the Future series.

In 1997, in Junior Yamaha, he was again crowned the Super One British Champion as well as winning the McLaren-Mercedes Champions of the Future series for the second successive season.

A fourth in the Italian Open Championship the next season resulted in Lewis being signed by McLaren and Mercedes-Benz to their Young Driver Support Programme.

The Briton then spent a year in Intercontinental A before moving to Formula A, where his karting career peaked when he was crowned the European Champion.

After that is was off to cars and British Formula Renault, where Hamilton won the title in 2003 before moving to the F3 Euroseries, whose championship he duly secured two years later.

Lewis's latest Championship success came in 2006, when he won the GP2 series with the ART Grand Prix team.

His achievements in junior series earned him a test with the McLaren F1 team and after impressing team boss Ron Dennis, Lewis landed the coveted role of team-mate to Fernando Alonso for the 2007 F1 season.

He quickly rose to the occasion, with fourth place in his first qualifying and a third-placed finish in his debut grand prix in Australia seeing Dennis' faith in Hamilton immediately pay off.

The McLaren driver went on to record a further eight consecutive podium finishes, including race wins in Canada and the United States, before finishing his first race off the podium and out of the points in the European GP, round 10 of the Championship.

Hamilton quickly bounced back with a win in Hungary and followed that up with three more points-finishes before claiming his fourth win of the season in Japan.

With two races remaining on the calendar, Lewis looked likely to become the first rookie to win the World title.

A poor tyre decision then saw him retiring ignominiously from the Chinese GP, although he still entered the final race of the season as the leader in the Drivers' Championship.

Unfortunately for Hamilton, however, it was not to be: after a poor start in the Brazilian Grand Prix, a gearbox problem cost him roughly half a minute and sent him tumbling down the field.

He eventually finished seventh, but Kimi Raikkonen's victory put paid to his quest.

2007, though, wasn't without it's problems for Hamilton as McLaren were involved in a spy scandal that resulted in them being excluded from the Constructors' Championship and almost saw Lewis and Alonso thrown out of the Drivers' Championship.

There were also on-going problems between the two team-mates that came to a head in Hungary where, after Hamilton had broken an agreement by not letting Alonso past him during final qualifying, the Spaniard retaliated by deliberately holding his team-mate up in the pits.

Comments also regularly flew between the two through the media as the relationship deteriorated to the point where they were barely speaking.

Not that communication will be necessary next season as, while Hamilton is staying with McLaren, Alonso has left the team to return to Renault.

In what amounts to a swap deal, the Spaniard's replacement and Hamilton's 2008 team-mate is up-and-coming Finn Heikki Kovalainen.