Lewis Hamilton won the World F1 title for the fifth time yesterday but the first Briton to do so was Mike Hawthorn in 1958. Having retired from motor racing, he was killed in a road accident the following year. In the 1980s, there was a programme called The Rock’n’Roll Years. Brilliantly simple format: News footage from a particular year accompanied by a soundtrack of hits from that year. I was watching it with my girlfriend and her mother, who’d been engaged to Mike Hawthorn at the time of his death. The featured year was 1958. Suddenly he was on screen being interviewed after winning the title. Years before YouTube, this was the first time my girlfriend’s mum had heard his voice or seen a moving image of him since he died and as she ran from the room sobbing, this was the accompanying track. Though Tragic Moments would have been more appropriate.
The original Lewis Hamilton.

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