Lewis Hamilton - Past and Present - and a Lover

Lewis Hamilton's life has changed for ever. He can now never remain in annonimity. Media, and indeed the whole world of motorsports, are going to watch his every step, bring under scrutiny his past deeds, his love life and family, and every microscopic detail.

Home

Home was a small flat in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, where he lived with Anthony, who split from Carmen, Lewis’s mother, when he was 2. Anthony once held down three jobs to keep the money coming in. When McLaren stepped in to finance the young racer’s career, Lewis, his father, Linda, his stepmother, and Nicholas, his younger brother, who suffers from cerebral palsy, moved to a house in Tewin, a village near Stevenage. Linda and Nicholas followed Sunday’s victory on television, although they sometimes go to Lewis’s races.

Lewis now lives mostly in a £1 million mansion in Woking, Surrey, to be near the McLaren factory. Will he follow the advice of accountants and move abroad to avoid the long arm of the British taxman, to a harbour-front apartment in Monaco alongside Jenson Button and David Coulthard, or to Lake Geneva, along with Fernando Alonso, his team-mate? Or will he want a vast Swiss farmhouse like Michael Schumacher’s, complete with health centre, cinema and petrol station?

The Women

The first kiss-and-tell has appeared in a British tabloid as a schoolmate from Stevenage breathlessly told of their first romantic encounter in the back of Hamilton’s Mini. But he proclaims himself in love with Jodia Ma, the teenage sweetheart he met at Cambridge Arts and Science College. The drawback is that she is from Hong Kong and he travels the world. Hamilton has ordered a £10,000 diamond bracelet for Ma, but Formula One is awash with beautiful women and he would not be the first racing driver to have his head turned.