Lewis Hamilton at 400: A career measured in firsts
Melbourne, 18 March 2007. A 22-year-old rookie finishes third in his first Grand Prix, and the paddock is still working out what it has just seen.
More than 19 years later, Lewis Hamilton is about to start his 400th. The São Paulo Grand Prix this Sunday will make him the second driver in history to reach the mark, with only Fernando Alonso ahead of him on the all-time list of starts. The 45-year-old Spaniard is closing in on 450.
Hamilton has played the number down, calling it “kind of irrelevant” while admitting that Brazil is a beautiful place to reach it. The records attached to it are harder to wave away. He arrives with 106 wins, 105 pole positions, 209 podiums and seven world championships, figures no other driver in the sport comes close to matching across the board.
From Melbourne to Interlagos
The start was never quiet. Hamilton stood on the podium in each of his first nine races, won in Canada in his sixth and took his first pole there on the same weekend. His teammate that year was Alonso, the reigning double world champion, and the rookie matched him point for point.
Both finished one behind Kimi Räikkönen in the standings, which meant Hamilton missed the 2007 title by a single point.
The following year he made sure. Hamilton won the 2008 British Grand Prix in treacherous conditions by more than a minute, then arrived at Interlagos for the finale needing fifth place. With one corner left, he was sixth. Timo Glock, struggling on dry tyres as the rain returned, slowed enough for Hamilton to slip past on the final lap.
Fifth place. A title by one point, at 23, making him the youngest champion the sport had seen.
Interlagos gave him his first crown. It would keep giving.
McLaren gave him 21 wins and that one championship across six seasons. At the end of 2012, he made the call that defined the rest of his career, leaving for a Mercedes team that was yet to find its stride.
Silver years and a record book written
Hamilton won his first race for Mercedes in Hungary in 2013. The turbo-hybrid era then arrived and, with it, a dynasty. He won 11 races on the way to the 2014 title and 10 more in 2015 as Mercedes turned the new regulations into an advantage nobody could close. He lost 2016 to teammate Nico Rosberg by five points, then won four in a row from 2017 to 2020.
The records fell with a regularity that became almost routine, and nearly every one carried the same name. At Monza in 2017 he passed Michael Schumacher’s tally of 68 pole positions. At the 2020 Spanish Grand Prix he went beyond Schumacher’s 155 podiums.
At the Portuguese Grand Prix that year, he claimed a 92nd victory to pass the German’s win record, then reached 100 wins in Russia in 2021. His seventh world title, sealed at the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix, levelled him with Schumacher.
The consistency was as striking as the peaks. Between the 2018 British Grand Prix and the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix, he scored points in 48 consecutive races, only for a positive COVID-19 test to rule him out of the next one at Sakhir. He stood on a podium in 18 consecutive seasons, from his rookie year to his last year with Mercedes in 2024. By the end of their partnership, he had 84 wins with the team, more than any driver has taken with a single constructor.
Brazil remains the stage for his defining recoveries. At the 2021 São Paulo Grand Prix, aged 36, he was disqualified from qualifying for a rear-wing infringement, sent to the back for the Sprint, then handed a five-place grid penalty for fitting another engine.
He started the race 10th and won it. “This one’s for my dad,” he said, after his father reminded him of Bahrain in 2004, when a Formula 3 weekend that began from last place ended in victory.
The 2021 title fight ended on the final lap in Abu Dhabi, where Max Verstappen took the crown and Hamilton was denied an eighth championship that would have put him clear of Schumacher. The lean years followed.
A winless run of more than two years ended at Silverstone in 2024, where an emotional victory gave him a record ninth win at his home circuit. By then, he had already decided to leave. His final Mercedes season closed in Abu Dhabi, and the next chapter opened in red.
Red, and still hungry
The move to Ferrari was never going to be simple, and 2025 was not. Hamilton’s first season with the Scuderia brought a sprint win in Shanghai but ended his 18-year podium streak, a record he had held without anyone getting near it.
Then 2026 changed the mood. At the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix on 14 June, Hamilton took his first win for Ferrari and his 106th overall. It was his first Grand Prix victory since 2024.
The gap between his first victory in Canada in 2007 and that one was 19 years and four days. It was the longest span between a driver’s first and latest win in the sport’s history, beating the 15 years, six months and 28 days Räikkönen had managed.
Mexico City confirmed it was no fluke. Last weekend, he beat George Russell to pole by 0.009 seconds, his 105th and his first for Ferrari. That stretched another record, the longest gap between a driver’s first and most recent pole, to 19 years, four months and 22 days.
He finished second after a clash with teammate Charles Leclerc, which gave him a 209th career podium and left him third in the drivers’ standings, two points behind Max Verstappen.
Hamilton views this as simple. He says he still feels young, and that the pace, the speed, the dedication and the focus are all still there. The grid appears to agree. Few drivers have attempted a rest this size at 41, and fewer still have looked this competitive within two seasons of making it.
Lando Norris, the reigning world champion, called Hamilton an inspiration and said that seeing his age and form made him believe he could fight for many more years himself.
Nico Hülkenberg went further, pointing out that Hamilton could have retired many times over and chose not to. In his view, the fact that Hamilton still puts in the work and still wants this deserves respect.
An honorary home
There is a fitting symmetry in where the number lands. Hamilton won his first title at Interlagos in 2008 and produced one of his greatest recoveries there in 2021. In 2022, Brazil made him an honorary citizen.
Hamilton’s career has always been described through its numbers, partly because they are so extreme. Behind them sits something simpler: a driver who has kept turning up and kept finding a way to the front. He left McLaren for Mercedes, and then left Mercedes for Ferrari, starting from scratch again.
He finished third in Melbourne in 2007. Nearly 20 years later, he arrives in São Paulo third in the championship and two points off the next man up.
400 starts in, the start line is still where he wants to be.
Edited by Meghana Sree
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