Lewis Hamilton once offended his neighborhood after calling it a slum

Tanish Chachra | 24/10/2022
Lewis Hamilton once offended his neighborhood after calling it a slum

Lewis Hamilton comes from a humble background but calling his childhood neighbourhood a slum offended the Stevenage Borough Council.

The seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton is one of the few examples in F1 that proves that talent often triumphs over money. From a humble background, Hamilton and his father had seen enough hardships before McLaren spotted him.

From there onwards, Hamilton only climbed up to Formula 1 and became the most successful F1 driver in history with 103 Grand Prix statistically wins and seven world titles.

The Briton owns his humble background and, over the years, has talked about his childhood. He also spoke about how he was discriminated against because of his skin colour, but he remained focused on his work.

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Lewis Hamilton offended Stevenage Council

In 2018, Hamilton won the BBC Personality of the year award. While talking about rising through complex finances to become a millionaire, Hamilton called his childhood neighbourhood a slum.

“It’s been a really long journey, a dream for us all, as a family, to do something different, to get out of the slums,” he said in 2018. These words got a strong response from his hometown.

The council of Stevenage Borough expressed that they were very disappointed by the comments of Hamilton. Moreover, they also informed that people were also offended by it.

Mercedes star apologizes

Hamilton soon took to the internet to clarify his remarks. He accepted his mistake of calling his home a slum and said he didn’t choose the right words at that moment.

Further, he claimed that he is incredibly proud of where he comes from and would never bad mouth against his home. He promised that he didn’t mean the words he used.

Hamilton was indeed wrong to call his childhood place a slum. The housing prices at Stevenage have already reached above the national average since 2018.

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Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
Lewis Hamilton Mercedes

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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