Hamilton's father Anthony bought him a kart for Christmas when Lewis was six and committed to funding his son's career as long as he worked hard at school, taking on multiple jobs including contracting work and service positions to pay for racing. Hamilton won the British cadet karting championship at age ten, becoming the youngest winner of that title.
At the 1995 Autosport Awards, the ten-year-old Hamilton approached McLaren team boss Ron Dennis for an autograph and told him he wanted one day to race for the team. Dennis wrote in the autograph book to call him in nine years. In 1998, Dennis did call, following Hamilton's second Super One series and British championship, offering a place in the McLaren-Mercedes Young Driver Programme — the youngest driver to secure a contract that included an option on a future Formula One seat.
Hamilton progressed through Formula A and Formula Super A karting, winning the European karting championship in 2000 with maximum points. His teammate in the Mercedes Benz McLaren kart squad was Nico Rosberg.
Hamilton began car racing in the 2001 British Formula Renault Winter Series, finishing fifth. A full 2002 Formula Renault UK campaign with Manor Motorsport produced third overall. In 2003, he won the Formula Renault UK championship in dominant fashion with ten wins from fifteen races. He made a brief late-season debut in British Formula Three, retiring from both races.
Hamilton joined ASM for the 2004 Formula Three Euro Series, finishing fifth in the championship while winning the Bahrain F3 Superprix. For 2005, still with ASM — the reigning Euro Series champions — he dominated the championship with 15 wins from 20 rounds and 13 pole positions, also winning the Marlboro Masters of Formula Three at Zandvoort. McLaren executive Martin Whitmarsh had wanted Hamilton to spend a second year in Formula Three; Anthony Hamilton pushed for a GP2 move in 2005, leading to a dispute serious enough that Whitmarsh tore up the contract before Hamilton re-signed six weeks later.
Hamilton moved to ASM's sister GP2 team, ART Grand Prix, for the 2006 season. He won the GP2 championship at the first attempt, beating Nelson Piquet Jr. His campaign included a dominant win at the Nürburgring, a recovery from 18th after a spin at Istanbul to finish second, and a celebrated double-overtake on two rivals through Becketts at Silverstone — a high-speed sequence where passing is considered extremely difficult.
The title was clinched in unusual circumstances at Monza. Hamilton inherited the final point he needed to secure the championship after Giorgio Pantano was stripped of fastest lap in the feature race. Hamilton also faced a penalty during the season for overtaking the safety car at Imola, a similar infringement he would repeat four years later in Formula One at Valencia.
His immediate predecessor in the McLaren junior pipeline had come through multiple seasons of Formula Three and other categories; Hamilton's route from Formula Renault through a single season of Formula Three and a single GP2 campaign was comparatively compressed.
McLaren signed Hamilton for 2007 alongside two-time defending champion Fernando Alonso. He became the first black driver to compete in Formula One at the Australian Grand Prix and immediately set records: nine consecutive podium finishes from debut, four race wins in a rookie season, and the most points ever scored by a first-year driver to that point. He finished runner-up to Kimi Räikkönen by one point, level on points with teammate Alonso.
Hamilton won his first championship in 2008 at the Brazilian Grand Prix, overtaking Timo Glock in the final corners of the final lap to take fifth place and the title by one point from race winner Felipe Massa. He became the youngest World Drivers' Champion at that time.
After four years largely dominated by Red Bull, Hamilton joined Mercedes in 2013. The partnership proved enormously successful: Hamilton won six further championships in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, breaking records for all-time race wins, pole positions, and podium finishes along the way. He was knighted in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to motorsport. Hamilton moved to Ferrari for 2025, where he won his first race for the team in 2026 at Barcelona.
Hamilton's GP2 victory in 2006 was a formality in the sense that few doubted his arrival in Formula One, but it established the template for the remainder of his career: speed, an ability to recover from adversity mid-race, and a capacity to perform when the championship required a specific result. Seven world titles, 106 race wins, and 104 pole positions have made him statistically the most successful driver in Formula One history by several metrics, and one whose career began on the karting circuits of Hertfordshire and progressed through a McLaren-structured ladder without deviation.