B
y our estimates, Lewis Hamilton has traveled more than 80,000 miles this year, both for his job as one of the premiere drivers in Formula 1, and for leisure, as a perpetual tourist who’s always looking for his next adventure. And that’s not counting the 60-plus laps he drives on the track each race day either. It’s no surprise then, that Hamilton craves a little bit of stillness when he finds himself alone. And for as long as he can remember, Hamilton has found his solace in music.
“Music is the biggest part of my life,” Hamilton says. “It’s the most important thing that keeps me sane.”
For the F1 champ, making music has become a necessary outlet; a personal space to create, that’s all his own. It’s been nice, he explains, “In a sport where you don’t feel like you could fit in, where you know you’re different, but you can’t really talk too much and there’s no way to express yourself other than in a car, to then have music and be able to put my feelings out into something.”
The F1 star spoke to Rolling Stone during the recent Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort, where he partnered with Marriott Bonvoy to offer Bonvoy members an exclusive meet-and-greet in the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team area. Part of Marriott Bonvoy’s “1 Point Drop” experiences, members had a chance to attend a private Q&A with Hamilton and attend qualifying and race days at the seaside track — all for just one point. Upcoming “1 Point Drop” moments include a chance to attend the Las Vegas Grand Prix, with packages including Paddock/Paddock Club access going live the week of September 16.
Marriott Bonvoy has been a longtime partner with Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS, with the hospitality group’s branding seen throughout the F1 circuit. The travel program, meantime, includes more than 30 hotel brands and 8,500 luxury and lifestyle properties around the world, some of which have hosted Hamilton and the team.
“We are traveling to 24 different places around the world [each year] and I think one of the most difficult things when you are traveling is often missing your home bed,” Hamilton says. “I’ve traveled to cities and been booked at a hotel, walked straight into my room and left,” he continues, “so to find the right comfort has been a discovery process.” Marriott, the driver says, has “been so accommodating in all these different places that I’ve been to.”
Part of that has been finding a menu that caters to the famous vegan’s plant-based diet (“Marriott is really, really accommodating — they find things to make you,” Hamilton says). Another has been finding space for the driver to make music while on the road. “I carry one suitcase that has my music equipment,” Hamilton reveals, “So every time I get to a hotel, I always set up my mic.”
Hamilton’s musical aspirations started at an early age. His father played in a reggae band, which inspired him to pick up a guitar at 13. He bought a turntable when he was 16, eventually filling in for local DJs at London nightclubs when he was old enough to go out. He wrote his first song — an R&B track called “Never Again” — was he was 21. After that: “I was hooked.”
Lately, Hamilton has been going through waves of inspiration for the type of music he wants to make. He quietly dropped a track with Christina Aguilera for her 2018 album Liberation (under the artist name XNDA) and he name drops everyone from Wizkid to Coldplay and Billie Eilish when asked about favorite artists. Over the last year, he’s been listening to “a lot of afro beats,” and he enthusiastically nominates Megan Thee Stallion’s “Mamushi” for 2024 “Song of the Summer” honors. “It’s sick, I love that song. That’s probably the coolest track out there right now,” he gushes.
When it comes to his own music though, Hamilton admits he’s still unsure of what he wants to make — and what he wants to say. “I go through these phases where I’m doing a lot, I’m writing a lot, and I’m recording a lot, and really feeling inspired,” he says. “And then I go through these periods where I just stop doing it; I do it less and less and less, and then I stop setting my mic up.”
For someone who’s known for his daring overtakes and hairpin turns on the track, does the thought of releasing music scare him? The soft-spoken star demures when asked about his musical endeavors, revealing that he has “no plans on ever giving [the songs] to anybody,” at least for now. “I never got into music, to put the music up,” he says.
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Further complicating things, at least from this perspective, has been Hamilton’s incredibly close relationship with his fans. Few drivers are as well-liked as the Brit, and few athletes have given back to their sport the way Hamilton has, whether it’s signing autographs at the airport, making frequent public appearances, or doing intimate meet-and-greets with Marriott Bonvoy. He’s almost always taking time out for fans at every race weekend, and yet, there’s a prevailing feeling of resignation when Hamilton talks about the fandom, almost as if he’s expecting himself to do more, to say more, to sign more, even if it hasn’t been asked of him.
“From a driver’s perspective, for an individual or group of people to decide to support you out of only 20 [drivers]? It’s a real privilege,” he says. “And you feel like you’re on a journey with those people that you connect with. So when you lose, you lose together, and when you win, you win together.”
Hamilton tells a story about one of his favorite fan interactions, which isn’t really a single instance, but rather a collective memory. “Most fans are so kind to go out of their way. They’ve either written me a letter, or they’re people making bracelets, or people that bring me gifts,” he says. “I’ve got this one really sweet lady, for example, that’s traveled to quite a few of the European races, and she keeps turning up and giving me books of poems, and there’ll be a book on history, and she would have gone through and put tabs on all the important parts of the book.”
“People are so, so sweet,” he continues, “and you feel really bad, because everywhere you go, it’s like they give, give, give, and you don’t. I don’t carry around gifts with me, and often I’ve just come from the airport. So you feel like when someone gives you something, you’re supposed to try and give something back, and it always feels like you’ve not done enough.”
Of course, even fairweather fans will tell you Hamilton has done a lot for the sport, breaking barriers as the first — and only — black F1 driver to date, while ushering in a new generation of global superstars, with buzzed-about partnerships with Tommy Hilfiger, Dior and yes Marriott Bonvoy too. Releasing music would elevate him into an even greater stratosphere of stars, and perhaps finally provide him with something tangible to “give back.”
But Hamilton is also a consummate perfectionist. In his sport, races are often decided by mere thousandths of a second, and one tiny error could have your car crashing out. In the same way, he wants to make sure any music he releases can stand on its own, recalling how excited he was when he played his Aguilera duet for friends and they thought it was some “young artist” that had just come out.
The whole world knows what Hamilton can do when it comes to F1 — if he’s going to enter the music industry, he wants to be taken just as seriously, to give himself a similar chance to make it to the top. There’s still work to be done, Hamilton explains: new sounds to explore, new beats to create, new thoughts to take from pen to tune. So for now, Hamilton is just making music for himself.
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Maybe he’s not ready to release his music to the world just yet, but Hamilton is determined to use his metaphorical microphone to inspire others. As he approaches two decades in the sport, has he started to think about his legacy?
“I find legacy talk really awkward, because I don’t wake up every day and think of a legacy that I want to leave,” he says. “I’m not working towards a legacy; I work towards, ultimately, trying to be the best version of myself, in the hope that the decisions I make, the things I say, and the things that I do, hopefully have a positive impact on people.”
“I think about what I am going to do with this platform or this microphone that I have, and what I can actually do with the little time that we have on this planet,” he continues. And then, he says, “What can I do to leave the world a better place than when I started? I would imagine for all the good people in the world, it’s probably what they want to do also, right? That’s what I’m thinking about every day.”
