The Ferrari <\/a>driver made his F1 debut back in 2007 with McLaren<\/a>, a year after winning the GP2 championship.<\/p>\n Hamilton celebrates his GP2 success with Fred Vasseur and Ron Dennis<\/p>\n The 41-year-old Briton recalled that he was on the grid ahead of the 2006 Italian Grand Prix at Monza when McLaren boss Ron Dennis told him he would be driving the following season.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cMy moment was Monza 2006, I\u2019d just won the GP2 championship,\u201d Hamilton explained.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s on the grid, Kimi [Raikkonen] was on pole and I had the privilege of going onto the grid, and I was standing in front of Kimi\u2019s car, and Ron [Dennis] put his arm around me and he told me, looking up to Turn 1, he says, \u201cI\u2019m going to give you a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n “That was the moment. In the moment, I couldn\u2019t quite believe it and I didn\u2019t know if he was like, \u201cI\u2019m going to give you a chance\u201d\u2026 I didn\u2019t know what it was going to be a chance at, if it was really\u2026 That\u2019s what I was thinking when I left. But obviously that was the moment that he had decided that he was going to give me a chance for 2007.\u201d<\/p>\n Hamilton missed out on the F1 title in his rookie season by a point<\/p>\n Hamilton narrowly missed out on winning the F1 world title in his rookie campaign, but would go on to clinch the championship for the first time in 2008.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Following a switch to Mercedes <\/a>at the end of 2012, Hamilton enjoyed a dominant period of success, winning a further six world championships between 2014 and 2020 before his run was ended in controversial circumstances following defeat to Max Verstappen<\/a> in 2021.<\/p>\n At the end of the 2024 season, Hamilton completed a blockbuster switch to Ferrari.<\/p>\n Asked what he defines as success, Hamilton replied: \u201cI\u2019ve never really thought about how you would define success. I think success can be perceived in lots of different ways.<\/p>\n “I think waking up every day and trying again, always trying to be better than your previous self, evolving into the person that you feel comfortable in, who you want to be, overcoming adversity, proving people wrong that try to hold you back or bring you down, the way you show up.<\/p>\n “I think of course from the outside world results are what people call success, but I think internally for me it\u2019s just progress. If you\u2019re progressing, you\u2019re succeeding.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019ve always said I\u2019m really grateful for the records and those sorts of things, but they\u2019re not things I ever think of. The things I think of is every day how I tune my brain, because ultimately I\u2019m really focused on\u2026 You can tune yourself to believe what you want. And I\u2019m always trying to work on my inner self to programme myself to be moving forward, not looking at what\u2019s behind me.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a part of the journey but not necessarily the most important thing. The important thing is how you\u2019re getting up, it\u2019s how you\u2019re pushing forward, it\u2019s how you\u2019re trying to evolve, and just looking forward, always looking forward, never looking back.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton has opened up on how he found out he was going to a Formula 1 driver…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,846,823,134807,844,916,85],"class_list":["post-706860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-kimi-raikkonen","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-mario-andretti","tag-michael-schumacher","tag-renault","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Hamilton](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/xpb_141769_hires.jpg\")
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