Shanghai, March 2026. Ferrari red on the podium. A 41-year-old man removing his helmet to reveal the kind of smile that isn’t performed for cameras, the smile that escapes before you can compose yourself.
Lewis Hamilton’s maiden campaign with the Scuderia was an absolute disaster: A first season without a single podium finish, regularly outclassed by teammate Charles Leclerc, and never even threatening to pick up a race win. However, his second year looks to be off to a much better start.
The seven-time world champion finally delivered that first Ferrari podium in China, and while he slipped behind the McLarens in Japan, hopes are still high that a first win in scarlet could be just around the corner. Albeit not in Miami, if the latest betting odds are to be believed.
If you place your bets at Bovada Sportsbook, you’ll already know that it is the Mercedes duo of George Russell and shock championship leader Kimi Antonelli who are the two frontrunners to take the chequered flag on South Beach. The former is positioned at 7/5
with the latter at 6/4, while Hamilton languishes at 14/1. Still, one can never truly write off the seven-time world champion.
Throughout each of Hamilton’s seven world championships, the British superstar has had his fair share of iconic moments. But what was the most memorable moment of each of those seven campaigns? Let’s take a look.
Last corner, last Lap — Brazil 2008
Interlagos, the final race of the 2008 season, and Lewis Hamilton holds a seven-point lead over Felipe Massa. The permutations are simple: home favourite Massa wins, and Hamilton finishes sixth or lower, and the championship is claimed by the Brazilian. For 69 laps, everything is going according to plan. Hamilton sits comfortably in fourth place, young German sensation Sebastian Vettel all over his gearbox just behind.
Then, disaster strikes. Light rain falls. Pit stops cascade, but crucially, Toyota’s Timo Glock stays out in a bid to tame the conditions on dry tyres. Then, Hamilton drops behind Vettel’s Toro Rosso and falls into sixth place, precisely the position that hands Massa the title. Things stay that way until Massa crosses the line as the race winner, and for 30 seconds, the hometown hero is crowned champion in front of his adoring public.
But on that final lap, the dry tyres of Glock were now badly struggling. The German was slithering around the track, but he still clung to P4 heading into the final corner. Then, he was caught. First, Vettel powered through, then Hamilton slipped up the inside, claiming the P5 he needed to secure the title. 100,000 hearts broke in the Sao Paulo grandstand, but Hamilton didn’t care one bit. He had done it, his maiden world title, and he couldn’t have left his heroics any later.
The overtake that said everything — Japan 2014
Six years passed before the next title. Six years in which Hamilton left McLaren, arrived at Mercedes, and found himself at war with a man he’d been friends with since his karting days, a friendship that would be dismantled by championship battles across the next three years: Nico Rosberg.
By round 15 of the 20-race season in Japan, Hamilton led Rosberg by just three points, and the titanic Mercedes civil war looked to be going down to the wire. It was the German who took pole position in Suzuka, with Hamilton behind in second, and on wet race day, the Brit hunted down his teammate throughout the entirety of the race. Then, on Lap 29, he would get his chance.
Rosberg faltered slightly exiting the final corner; Hamilton used the speed differential between the two cars and pulled to the outside heading into Turn 1 Suzuka’s long, sweeping, terrifying first corner and made it stick. His 30th career victory. His eighth of the season. Rosberg admitted afterwards: “Lewis did a better job today and deserves to win.”
That concession mattered more than any points gap. Ten points between them with four races left and the momentum never returned. Some overtakes win races. That one, psychologically, won the championship.
The Grand Slam — Italy 2015
At the 2015 Italian Grand Prix, Hamilton was fastest in every practice session, in every qualifying segment. He took pole, led every lap, set the fastest lap, and claimed the Grand Slam F1’s rarest single-race achievement, delivered at Monza, the Cathedral of Speed, with 25 seconds of clear air to Vettel in second.
Then came the gift he hadn’t requested: Rosberg was running in third place, but his engine expired with three laps remaining, just as it looked as if he was closing in on second place. That extended Hamilton’s championship lead to 53 points with just seven races remaining, effectively ending the battle once and for all.
Chaos, composure — Singapore 2017
The 2017 fight was the best of his career, Hamilton and Vettel exchanging blows through a season that felt genuinely undecided deep into autumn. Vettel arrived in Singapore as the championship leader, claimed pole position, and looked poised to extend his lead at a track where it’s notoriously difficult to overtake. And then, before the field had reached Turn 3, the momentum in the title race took its pivotal swing.
Kimi Räikkönen, Max Verstappen, and Vettel all collided off the line, leaving the two Ferraris and the Red Bull tangled, damaged, and ultimately retired. Vettel’s race, and potentially his title, incinerated in seconds. Hamilton found himself leading a race he hadn’t anticipated winning from fifth on the grid, inheriting a championship lead he had no right to expect from that grid position.
Three safety car periods followed. He controlled everyone to win his 60th Grand Prix and swing the standings by 28 points. Fortune provided the opening. Composure converted it. He sealed the title in Mexico. Vettel never led the championship again.
Fourteenth to first — Germany 2018
Could anyone have predicted that a 14th-place grid slot would become the championship’s defining moment? Vettel led from pole in his home Grand Prix and was running away with it. Hamilton carved methodically through the midfield, staying clean, staying patient, managing tyres through a race that seemed destined to consolidate Vettel’s advantage.
Then a light shower fell on Hockenheim. Ten laps remaining. Vettel inexplicably, heartbreakingly ran wide under the safety car and slammed his Ferrari into the barriers. Hamilton navigated the chaos, absorbed a post-race reprimand for an incident at pit lane entry, and crossed the line first. Seventeen points up in the championship, before sealing his fifth title in Mexico.
The board swap — Canada 2019
Vettel physically walked to the front straight after the race and swapped the P1 and P2 position boards himself. That image of a four-time champion, incandescent, unable to contain his fury behind diplomatic language, tells you everything about how much the lap-48 five-second penalty stung. And yet. The decision stood.
Hamilton won the Canadian Grand Prix without leading a single lap on track and extended his championship lead regardless of Ferrari’s fury. The outrage was real. The result was immovable. Title sealed in Austin. Again.
Matching the legend — Turkey 2020
Istanbul, November, behind closed doors, courtesy of global events. Intermediate tyres, a treacherous surface, Lance Stroll leading from pole while Bottas spun himself out of a title fight he’d needed to win. Hamilton, starting sixth, on a one-stop strategy, his pit wall didn’t fully believe in and he knew it. They called for him to box again. He refused, because he’d felt the tires and trusted what he felt over what the data was suggesting. He was right.
He swept past Stroll with 11 laps remaining and won his 94th career victory. And then he cried. Openly. Alone in a paddock that had been emptied, in a year defined by loss and exhaustion and isolation, having matched Michael Schumacher’s seven world championships, a record that had seemed untouchable, eternal, beyond reach.
