The first person of mixed race becomes Formula One Champion

I am not sure about the title of ths piece, but I have borrowed it from elsewhere. It contains a distinction with which I am not comfortable but one that will be made again tomorrow and I offer this story to you as a good omen! Please let it give you confidence and remove any last minute nervousness that you may have.

Let me leave it to the Conservative newspaper Daily Telegraph totell the story of Lewis Hamilton, the new Formula 1 world champion:

A mixed-race boy who grew up on a council estate in Stevenage, his ascent to
become the youngest Formula One world champion ever at the age of 23 is a
victory for sheer talent and tenacity.

That victory is in no small part thanks to Lewis's father Anthony, who nurtured his son's skill from the earliest opportunity with impressive zeal.

Born in Stevenage in 1985, Lewis's black father Anthony and white mother Carmen split up when he was only two.

He lived with his mother for his first 15 years, shuttling between her home on the new town's Shephall estate and the house his father shared with his second wife Linda.Perhaps the fear of losing close contact with his son led Lewis's father to give him every bit of help he could with his chosen hobby.

He spotted Lewis's talent and - perhaps more importantly, his determination - when Lewis first stepped into a go-kart while on holiday in Spain aged six.

Spinning around corners at speeds that would not be allowed on a child's course in today's Britain, he promptly crashed. Sporting a bloody nose, he did not turn crying back to Daddy but climbed back in for
another go.

Impressed, Anthony bought him his first go-kart that Christmas.

Just two years later Lewis started racing competitively. Anthony took part-time jobs on top of his post at British Rail to pay for his son's racing.

Three years later he contacted Dennis, who signed the youngster to McLaren's young driver's programme.

Apart from financial and technical help, Dennis crucially protected him from what could have been the damaging glare of early publicity.

But as a youngster he faced the difficult decision at home about who to live with, when his mother announced she and her boyfriend Raymond Lockhart were leaving Stevenage for London.

Lewis chose to stay in Stevenage, moving in with his father, step-mother and step-brother Nicholas, now 16, who has cerebral palsy.

The decision proved a wise one and with the help of his father, who had by then founded a successful computer company and become his manager, he quickly rose up through motorsport's ranks.

Before Sunday's race in São Paulo he said: "Withoutmy family, I wouldn't be able to do anything. I owe everything to them. My dad for pushing me, and helping me with decisions. "My mum, my two mums, for being so supportive, for raising me and for giving me direction. And my brother who's never ever doubted me."

At one time Anthony, the son of immigrants who had moved to England from the Caribbean island of Grenada, was holding down three jobs to continue his son's expensive pursuit. One involved putting up estate agents' signs for £15 a time.

Folks, it is not just that Lewis has become a world superstar. It is not just that he has done it in what until yesterday was “a white man’s sport". It is not that he has done it with immense skill and a personal dedication and an extraordinary level of professionalism.

It is that he has done it and, in doing so, has been taken to the hearts of the the British people. There is hope for our society yet!

They have taken him to their hearts and he has not compromised in order to achieve this position. As the Telegraph concludes:

Touted as the 'Tiger Woods of F1', he has avoided the golfing superstar's controversial approach of describing himself as multi-racial rather than 'black'. Some viewed that approach as Woods denying his Afro-American ancestry, even though he is more Thai than black.

For a long time the F1 champion chose to keep quiet on the subject.

But last October he took a stand on the issue of his race, naming Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King as his heroes.

"Being black is not a negative," he told Black History Month magazine. "It's a positive, if anything, because I'm different."

We love the man. Like we will love your man on Wednesday.