Photograph: Chris Walker/Rex/Shutterstock Lewis Hamilton winning a karting race in 1996, with McLaren boss Ron Dennis. “I did karate because I was being beaten up and I wanted to be able to defend myself.” “I did boxing because I needed to channel the pain,” he says. I just kept it to myself.” Sport offered him an outlet. As a kid I remember just staying quiet about it because I didn’t feel anyone really understood. And my dad was quite tough, so I didn’t tell him too much about those experiences.

But she didn’t fully understand the impact of the things I was experiencing at school. Lewis is mixed-race, born to a white mother, Carmen Larbalestier, who raised him until he was 12, when he went to live with his Grenadian-British father, from whom she had separated. The trouble was he didn’t have many people to talk to about what he was going through. Bullying and racial taunts were a consistent feature of his childhood in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, a new town 30 miles north of London his dad taught him the best response was to excel at his sport.

A s Lewis Hamilton rose through the ranks of competitive go-karting, his father, Anthony, told him: “Always do your talking on the track.” Lewis had a lot to talk about.

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