Even Lewis Hamilton’s bitterest critics could not deny his unique importance within Formula 1.
Heading into his 19th season with seven world championships and 105 grands prix victories to his name, Hamilton is indisputably F1’s most successful driver. The impact of that incredible achievement is increased exponentially by the fact he is (still) the only black driver in a predominantly white sport. This combination has made him an inspirational figure to millions.The significance of Hamilton’s race is the focus of “Sir Lewis”, a new biography by Michael E Sawyer, associate professor of African-American Literature and Culture at the University of Pittsburgh. His expertise in race and philosophy promise to offer insight into an important aspect of Hamilton’s popularity which is often mentioned but rarely gets serious study.
The author describes “Sir Lewis” as both a biography of the driver and an attempt to “examine and critique every institution Hamilton is involved with from a perception of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality and class.” These are not typical themes for a motorsport book, but have obvious relevance here.
For whatever reason, publisher Pan Macmillan hasn’t made the book’s focus a feature of its packaging, which would lead anyone to expect this is a conventional biography. It seems the author had other plans at one stage – his university’s website refers to an apparent alternative working title: “Maybe it’s because I’m Black”. Anyone who picks this up expecting the generic Hamilton biography it appears to be will be surprised to find its subject isn’t even mentioned in some of its opening pages.
Does it succeed? A biography of Hamilton which takes the story Formula 1 fans already know well and places it within the context of culture, politics and history could be a powerful way of communicating what a rare and special figure he has become. But the two ideas are inelegantly combined in “Sir Lewis”.
Within its 250 pages, there were occasional pockets where Sawyer’s points come across clearly. He offers some thought-provoking observations on how racial attitudes towards shape the views some have of Hamilton and how they explain – or try to ‘explain away’ – his success. Instructive comparisons are drawn with the handful of others whose experiences are anything like Hamilton’s – Tiger Woods being an obvious example. But these points are too often buried under paragraphs of regurgitated articles, tenuous associations with other figures and passages of little to no obvious relevance to the subject.
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The book doesn’t contain any original interviews, which given its focus is not necessarily a drawback, but too little discernment has been shown when selecting sources. Quality publications appear alongside tenth-rate content scrapers and even deleted social media posts under potentially fake names. Throughout the text, Sawyer leans heavily on mostly recent articles, giving an impression the was hastily put together – a view reinforced by the fact several of the URLs cited reveal his search terms.
Hamilton’s first season occupies a disproportionately large chunk of the book – one-quarter of its 24 chapters – and these sections draw largely from his autobiography (written 18 years ago) and press conferences, reproduced in indigestible verbatim chunks. The characterisation of other figures is simplistic, hero-or-villain stuff, with Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso falling into the latter camp.
It appears the book’s editor has a blind spot for F1 team names: ‘McLaren’, ‘Benetton’ and ‘Toro Rosso’ are all misspelled. ‘Williams’ is spelled correctly, but is incorrectly identified as the team Alonso won his world championships with.
The book works best when its two main themes converge in the events of 2020. This was a particularly significant season as it provided the moment Hamilton won his record-equalling seventh world championship and became much more outspoken in promoting anti-racism and diversity.
Hamilton recently insisted he won’t be deflected from advocating diversity and equality by the election of a US president who is committed to turning back the clock on decades of progress. Books which explain why that matters are necessary, but it is also necessary for them to get their point across clearly, and “Sir Lewis” too often falls short by that measure.
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“Sir Lewis: The Definitive Biography”
Author: Michael E Sawyer
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2025
Pages: 248
Price: £20
ISBN: 9781035071647
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bosyber (@bosyber)
9th March 2025, 11:28
Thanks for reviewing. Idea of the boot seems to have merit, but apparently also more care and attention than this book was able to.
El Pollo Loco
9th March 2025, 11:30
The team name of its subject and the focus of a quarter of the book, was misspelled? That’s pretty embarrassing for the author, publisher and editor (assuming it had one). It sounds like Lewis had zero interaction with the author. Comes off as a bit disrespectful to LH himself.
H@nk
9th March 2025, 13:12
‘Definitive’, so a confirmation his career is over?
Jere (@jerejj)
9th March 2025, 14:17
His career probably won’t be over for the foreseeable future & who knows, perhaps he’ll continue into the next decade.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
9th March 2025, 23:20
So he would be racing into his 45s? Seems very far fetched, only him and alonso are still around at over 40, and when raikkonen did that recently he wasn’t the same driver he once was.
El Pollo Loco
10th March 2025, 1:06
lol, when Raikkonen came back he was still nearly 15 years younger than Alonso is now. Raikkonen was just never really able to recapture his old magic after not being on the Michelins anymore or in a Newey car. Even his 2007 WDC was pretty weak. He should have dominated that season. The next season he got easily beaten by Massa. There was just something about the Michelins’ characteristics that worked for him.
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
10th March 2025, 20:39
No, confirmation that an accurate title was among the things lost to hastily putting together the book.
S Arkazam
9th March 2025, 14:17
Too soon
SteveP
9th March 2025, 15:04
It sounds like a badly written student thesis.
The author is an “associate professor”? 2/10 must try harder
El Pollo Loco
10th March 2025, 1:13
Only being an associate professor isn’t a disqualifier by any means, but the rest sure is. Professors do need to write books if they hope to achieve tenure and any status. This seems like a lazy attempt to do the former and make some $ at the same time. Most professors’ books are pretty specialized with the most modest of commercial potential let alone pop culture potential. There’s really zero excuse for the type errors that are in this book. AP Styleguard costs $40 for an annual subscription and will catch every single type of spelling, grammar, style, etc. error including proper nouns like those he messed up.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
11th March 2025, 19:11
wow, I remember having to get the book. how times have changed.
Edvaldo
9th March 2025, 16:04
I looked at this and instantly remembered that he got a biography right in his first year with Mclaren, even before the end of the season, the one they had to rectify the cover because it already considered him WDC before it was official, and he ended up losing it.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
9th March 2025, 20:32
I don’t remember that specifically but he definitely did release an autobiography during his first season and there was something like half a dozen biographies of him released in that first year.
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
9th March 2025, 16:24
Lewis is or will be a fascinating case study or story one day.
But this;
Is enough to suggest that they aren’t the ones to tell that story.
Oleg
10th March 2025, 10:54
The author of this hype-headed book clearly overestimates his knowledge of Hamilton’s biography.
I think Hamilton himself is unlikely to thank the author for this “work”.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
10th March 2025, 11:44
Very successful f1 drivers always seem to be contentious. Im trying to think of one that isnt, certainly multi WDC winners. That Lewis has been subjected to racial abuse since he was 6 years old and karting doesn’t necessarily mean that he is contentious because of outmoded views by people who choose to wear red cords. He is an unbelievably good role model for kids from normal ( for f1 drivers) backgrounds but f1 is still effectively a closed shop for those born with a silver spoon in their mouth and suffers as a result. That Alonso and Lewis have not been shifted by young guns, shows the paucity of talent available and as much as Lewis is trying to change that, he wont.
Tranos
11th March 2025, 8:44
Could the book just be AI generated?
Moi
11th March 2025, 11:59
AI would get the names of F1 teams right, and probably be less biased.