Formula 1: Lewis Hamilton becomes second 7-time world champion
By Asher Fair
Lewis Hamilton is officially the second seven-time world champion in Formula 1 history, as he has secured the 2020 championship with three races to go.
Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton entered the 14th of 17 races on the 2020 Formula 1 season, the Turkish Grand Prix at Intercity Istanbul Park, with a chance to secure a record-tying seventh world championship.
He entered this race with an 85-point lead over teammate Valtteri Bottas in second place in the driver standings.
Entering this 58-lap race around the 14-turn, 3.317-mile (5.338-kilometer) road course in Tuzla, Turkey, there were a maximum of 104 points on the table for each driver throughout the rest of the season, with 26 on the table in each race: 25 for winning the race and one for recording the race’s fastest lap.
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Bottas needed to outscore Hamilton by at least eight points in this race in order to stay alive in the championship fight heading to the season’s antepenultimate race at Bahrain International Circuit, the Bahrain Grand Prix, on Sunday, November 29, as he needed to be within 77 points, not just 78, since Hamilton had already secured the tiebreaker.
Hamilton won nine of the season’s first 13 races while Bottas won two, meaning that Bottas had no way to secure more wins than his teammate in 2020 with just four races remaining on the schedule.
In the Turkish Grand Prix, Hamilton scored 25 points with a win, his 10th of the year, while Bottas failed to score any points with a 14th place finish following several spins. With the race in the books, Hamilton’s lead over Bottas in the driver standings is now 110 points, meaning that there is no way for the 30-year-old Finn to catch the 35-year-old Briton to win the 2020 world title.
As a result, Hamilton has officially become just the second seven-time world champion in Formula 1 history and the first since Michael Schumacher won his seventh and final title in 2004.
Schumacher’s 2004 world championship was his fifth in a row, as he won titles in 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. Hamilton’s 2020 championship is his fourth in a row and his sixth in the last seven years.
Since the V6 turbo hybrid era began in 2014, the only world championship battle which Hamilton has lost took place in 2016, when he fell just five points shy of teammate Nico Rosberg in a battle that came down to the season finale, just days before Rosberg unexpectedly retired.
Hamilton’s 2020 title comes just three races after he tied Schumacher’s wins record of 91 and two races after he broke that record with his 92nd victory. The driver who replaced Schumacher at Mercedes ahead of the 2013 season now has 94 victories to his name, and he has not won fewer than nine races in any of the last seven seasons.
While the 2020 championship has been decided — and was practically wrapped up even before the math officially eliminated Bottas from contention — there is still plenty to fight for throughout the final three races of the season. These races are scheduled to take place over the course of three consecutive weekends following a week off next weekend.
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The Bahrain Grand Prix is the next race on the schedule and is scheduled to take place on Sunday, November 29 at Bahrain International Circuit. The Sakhir Grand Prix is then scheduled to take place on Sunday, December 6 on a different layout at the same venue, and the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is scheduled to conclude the season on Sunday, December 13 at Yas Marina Circuit.