Knight of the Realm

Sir Lewis Hamilton

So there’s been controversy.

Here…

Here…

Here…

…and elsewhere too. To top it off, Max was his usual gracious self. Sadly, Max will always carry an asterisk next to his first world championship in F1. It will hang over his head for his whole career, however long it lasts. He knows it, and we do too.

But it doesn’t matter. I don’t feel sorry for Lewis either. Yes, he got robbed, but he’s won 103 Grand Prix races and 7 world championships, achievements Max Verstappen will never equal. Max might win three or four, but he’s an asshole, and he’s not driving for Ferrari, where you can get away with his kind of shit. Max is a bully, a destroyer of tires and cars and other drivers, and that will catch up to him in the long run. The drivers who have been knighted in the UK weren’t blessed by their wins as much as their character. All three before Lewis — Jackie Stewart, Stirling Moss, and Jack Brabham — didn’t have as many wins in total as Lewis Hamilton. They were, like Lewis, gentlemen in the old-fashioned sense of the term.

Lewis can retire today with 12 more wins than Michael Schumacher. He has also been a heroic presence on the F1 circuit, battling and overcoming a nearly invisible — because not reported — specter of racism in his own country and others. In him I can cheer the BLM tee shirts and open black pride he continually exhibits. Britain is not the U.S. It’s a thoroughly racist nation.

Lewis is a knight. As knights were meant to be. Kind, stalwart, brave, brilliant. Things Max will never be.

Herewith, some pics of his great day…

With the Queen

With his Mom

With his Dad

I know none of you get this, but Lewis Hamilton is as great an athlete as Tiger Woods. Probably better, given that he risks his life every time he steps up to the starting line. He’s the best racing car driver in the world, NASCAR, Indy car, and drag racing included. He has dominated his sport as no other man has, which puts him on equal footing with Michael Jordan and Jimmy Brown. But he’s English. Which means you don’t know him from Adam. Sorry. Sorry for you, I mean. He’s a gifted thing to watch in action. 

P.S. What is it like to drive fast? I’ve done it, don’t know how to describe it to you. But I can show you.

Paris, 1978, O-Dark-Thirty. He was meeting a woman.

And there’s Lewis Hamilton, fastest lap ever in F1.

Then there’s actual racing. Like Hamilton in Monaco.

What is it like to drive fast? It’s fucking amazing.