Lewis Hamilton became just the third driver in Formula 1 history along with Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher to win five championships.
In 2002, Michael Schumacher became just the second driver in Formula 1 history to win five championships. The only driver who had previously done so was Juan Manuel Fangio, and he had not done so since 45 years prior.
Fangio drove in Formula 1 as a full-time driver for just seven seasons, but he won five championships in those seven seasons. He won the championships in the 1951 season, the 1954 season, the 1955 season, the 1956 season and the 1957 season.
Until Schumacher came along, only one driver aside of Fangio was even able to win four championships. That driver was Alain Prost, who won his four championships in the 1985 season, the 1986 season, the 1989 season and the 1993 seasons.
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Schumacher became the second five-time Formula 1 champion by winning the championships in the 1994 season, the 1995 season, the 2000 season, the 2001 season and the 2002 season. He went on to win two additional championships in the 2003 season and the 2004 season. As a result, his championship total of seven is the highest of all-time.
Now, for the first time since Schumacher became a five-time champion in the 2002 season, another five-time champion has been crowned. That driver is Lewis Hamilton, who just clinched his fifth career championship over four-time champion Sebastian Vettel with two races remaining on the 2018 schedule.
Hamilton won his first four Formula 1 championships in the 2008 season, the 2014 season, the 2015 season and the 2017 season.
Hamilton clinched his fifth career Formula 1 championship by finishing in fourth place in the 71-lap Mexican Grand Prix around the 17-turn, 2.674-mile (4.304-kilometer) Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, Mexico.
Vettel finished the race in second place, meaning that after entering the race trailing the 33-year-old Briton by 70 points in the driver standings and still mathematically eligible to win the championship because of the fact that a maximum of 75 points were on the table throughout the final three races of the season heading into the race, he exited the race trailing Hamilton by 64 points in the driver standings.
While he outscored Hamilton by six points (18 to 12) in this race, he exited it having been mathematically eliminated from championship contention, as with a maximum of 50 points left on the table for each driver with 19 of the season’s 21 races in the books, there is no way by which he can pass Hamilton and become a five-time champion this year.
Congratulations to Lewis Hamilton on joining an elite group of five-time Formula 1 champions. Will the 33-year-old Briton become just the second driver to win six Formula 1 championships next year? Will he eventually tie if not break Michael Schumacher’s all-time record of seven career titles? If so, when will he tie the record, and when will he break it?