In December 1995, 10-year-old Lewis Hamilton walked up the McLaren team principal Ron Dennis at the Autosport Awards ceremony and and said "I want to race for you one day. I want to race for McLaren."
Lewis Hamilton
In 2008, more than a decade later, Hamilton won the World Championship for McLaren Formula One team before moving to Mercedes AMG last year. Last month's win at the Singapore Grand Prix was the seventh win of the year for the British Formula One racer.
Just a few days ahead of that victory, which put him in the lead of this season's Driver's Championship, he and his teammate Nico Rosberg appeared as brand ambassadors of Swiss luxury watch IWC Schaffhausen to launch their respective special edition watches, the Ingenieur Chronograph Edition "Lewis Hamilton" and Ingenieur Chronograph Edition "Nico Rosberg".
"I wanted to have a watch that featured a lot of technology," says Lewis Hamilton, adding that the technological sophistication of the watch directly reflects the high-tech materials used in Formula One.
At the event, we talk to Hamilton about his career and the challenge in adapting to Formula One's new regulations.
There's been a few changes regarding the technical regulations in this season: the new engine formula, restricted fuel use, limited number of tyres, etc. The latest addition is prohibition on communicating certain things using the pit-to-car radio, how do you feel about that?
Before, you just drove as fast as you could, flat out, all the time. Now it's different because there will be a list of corners which use the tyres more and the corners, which use the left front more or the rear left more and you have to make that go as far as possible. Then there will be a few targets that you have to make, engine strategies that you have to meet.
[With prohibition on pit-to-car radio], I think it's kind of needed now that they have taken the step back because I hear that a lot of drivers are like 'hey, why are my teammates faster than me'. That's good now because, in a way, you are invisible to drivers that you are racing against. I'm excited about that.
I will find out this weekend if I prefer it. I love the way Formula One is but I'm more old-school. When I was go karting, we never had the technology so drivers next to you can never see what you are doing. They could follow you on the track only if they could keep up.
How do you feel now compared to when you drove Formula One for the first time?
The good thing about Formula One is that it's always changing. It gets harder and harder every time because there's new technology coming in and you want to learn it. You want to be quick, the tyre changes, the power changes. Every year has been a real challenge and it's never the same as the previous year. Because of the technology now, in Formula One, everything you do, apart from with your own body, as soon as you touch something, as soon as you do with something with your car, it's visible to other cars.
Every year other drivers find out the techniques you use that makes you different from him or her. It's your own techniques that got you where you are today so you want to shield them from others. With the way it is now, it's easier to catch up. How to keep moving forward, even if you are caught up each time is the hardest part.
In Formula One races, winning or losing is decided by milliseconds, what's your relationship with time; is it your enemy or is it your friend?
I wouldn't say time is anyone's friend. You only have a certain amount of time and it's running out so that doesn't make me happy. There's nothing you can do about it. When you are racing you don't have anything that tells you the time.
For example on the qualifying round, you don't have time, you are chasing time the whole way around, but you don't know if you're one second up or down, you can kind of feel it but it can play tricks on your mind. So you just try the best you can, full gas as long as you can.
What do you think has brought you where you are today?
I wouldn't be here without my family, I owe everything to my family. I was eight years old [when I started], so I couldn't have gone to get a job and paid for myself to race. My parents wanted to have their own lives, they wanted to go out and buy fashionable things, go to the movies and concerts, but they put all that aside. Since I was eight they didn't do any of those things; never went to concerts, never enjoyed themselves, they put everything into my racing.
There's a reason for me being where I am. They are the ones who sacrificed their lives, my dad had four jobs at one stage. We didn't have a lot of money, we lived in a one bedroom flat. I don't know how he did it. Both of them put all their life savings into my racing and having that belief in me and that belief has never ever dropped and still how it is today. That is quite significant when you are eight years old; to have that amount of belief in you.
