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According to our estimates, Lewis Hamilton has traveled more than 80,000 miles this year, both for his job as one of Formula 1’s top drivers and for fun, as a perpetual tourist always looking for his next adventure. And that doesn’t even include the 60 laps he drives on the track every race day. So it’s no surprise that Hamilton craves a little quiet when he finds himself alone. And ever since he can remember, Hamilton has found 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 Formula 1 champion, making music has become a necessary outlet; a personal space for creativity, and that’s all he has. It’s been great, he explains, “in a sport where you don’t feel like you fit in, where you know you’re different, but you can’t really talk much and there’s no way to express yourself other than in the car, then listening to music and being able to express my feelings in something.”
The Formula 1 star spoke to Rolling Stone During the recent Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort, he teamed up with Marriott Bonvoy to offer Bonvoy members an exclusive meet and greet at the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team Area. As part of Marriott Bonvoy’s ‘1 Point Drop’ experiences, members had the opportunity to attend a private Q&A session with Hamilton and attend qualifying and race days at the seaside track – all for just 1 point. Upcoming ‘1 Point Drop’ moments include the opportunity to attend the Las Vegas Grand Prix, with packages including Paddock/Paddock Club access starting the week of September 16.
Marriott Bonvoy has been a long-standing partner of Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS, with the hospitality group’s brand featured throughout the Formula 1 circuit. Meanwhile, the travel programme 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 travel to 24 different places around the world. [each year] “I think one of the hardest things about traveling is missing your bed a lot of the time,” Hamilton says. “I’ve traveled to cities and booked a hotel room, and I’ve walked right into my room and walked out, so finding the right comfort has been a discovery process.” Marriott “has been so accommodating in all these different places I’ve been to,” the driver says.
Part of that was finding a menu that catered to the popular vegan diet (“Marriott is really, really accommodating—they find things that make you feel good,” Hamilton says.) And part of it was finding space for the driver to make music while traveling. “I carry one bag with my music gear in it, so every time I get to a hotel, I always have my mic ready,” Hamilton reveals.
Hamilton's musical ambitions began at an early age. His father played in a reggae band, which inspired him to learn to play guitar at the age of 13. He bought a record player when he was 16, and eventually worked as a DJ in London nightclubs when he was old enough to break out. He wrote his first song, an R&B ballad called “Never Again”, when he was 21. After that, he said, “I was hooked.”
Lately, Hamilton has been experiencing waves of inspiration regarding the type of music he wants to make. He quietly released a song with Christina Aguilera for her 2018 album release (Under the artist name XNDA) he names everyone from Wizkid to Coldplay and Billie Eilish when asked about his favorite artists. Over the past year, he’s been listening to “a lot of African beats,” and enthusiastically nominates Megan Thee Stallion’s “Mamushi” for 2024’s “Song of the Summer.” “It’s amazing, I love that song. That’s probably the coolest song out there right now,” he says.
But when it comes to his own music, Hamilton admits he's still not sure what he wants to put out and what he wants to say. “I go through these phases where I do a lot, I write a lot, I record a lot, and I feel really inspired,” he says. “And then I go through these periods where I stop doing it; I do it less and less and less, and then I stop setting up my mic.”
For someone known for his bold overtaking and sharp turns on the track, is the idea of releasing music scare himThe quiet star is humble when asked about his musical endeavors, revealing that he has “no plans to give up anything at all.” [the songs] “For anyone,” at least for now. “I never cared about music, to put out music,” he says.
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Complicating matters, at least from this perspective, is Hamilton’s extremely close relationship with his fans. Few drivers are as popular as the Briton, and few athletes have given back to their sport in the way Hamilton has, whether through signing airport memorabilia, frequent public appearances, or intimate meetings with Marriott Bonvoy. He always makes time for the fans every race weekend, and yet there is a pervasive sense of resignation when Hamilton speaks of his fans, as if he expects himself to do more, to say more, to respect himself. Register moreEven if he is not asked to.
“From a driver’s point of view, for an individual or a group of people to decide to support you out of only 20 people [drivers]“It’s a real honor,” he says. “And you feel like you’re on a journey with these people you’re connecting with. So when you lose, you lose together, and when you win, you win together.”
Hamilton tells a story about one of his favorite interactions with fans, which isn’t really a single instance, but a collective memory. “Most fans are so kind that they go out of their way,” he says. “They’ll either write me a letter, they’ll make me bracelets, they’ll give me gifts. For example, I have a really nice lady who’s been to quite a few European races, and she keeps coming up and giving me books of poems, and there’ll be a history book, and she’ll have gone through and marked up all the important parts of the book.”
“People are so nice,” he continues, “and you feel really bad, because everywhere you go, you feel like they’re giving and giving and giving, and you’re not. I don’t bring gifts, and I’ve often just come from the airport. So you feel like when someone gives you something, you’re supposed to try to give something back, and you always feel like you’re not doing enough.”
Of course, even the most weathered fans will tell you that Hamilton has done so much for the sport, breaking barriers as the first black Formula 1 driver to date, while also ushering in a new generation of global stars, with controversial partnerships with Tommy Hilfiger, Dior and Marriott Bonvoy too. Releasing music would elevate him to a higher level of stardom, and perhaps finally give him something tangible to “give back.”
But Hamilton is also a perfectionist. In his sport, races are often decided by milliseconds, and a simple mistake can result in a crash. Likewise, Hamilton wants to make sure that any music he produces can stand on its own, and recalls how excited he was when he played a duet of Aguilera for his friends and they thought he was a “young artist” who had just come out.
The world knows what Hamilton can do when it comes to Formula 1 – if he’s going to enter the music industry, he wants to be taken seriously, and give himself a similar chance to reach the top. Hamilton makes it clear that there’s still work to do: new sounds to explore, new rhythms to create, new ideas to take from pen to melody. So now Hamilton is making music for himself.
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He may not be ready to release his music to the world yet, but Hamilton He is He is determined to use his metaphorical microphone to inspire others. As he approaches two decades in the sport, has he begun to think about his legacy?
“I find it really awkward to talk about legacy, because I don’t wake up every day and think about what legacy I want to leave,” he says. “I’m not working for a legacy; I’m ultimately working to try to be the best version of myself, hoping that the decisions I make, the things I say, the things I do, have a positive impact on people.”
“I think about what I’m 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. “What can I do to leave the world a better place than it was when I started? I imagine that all the good people in the world, they probably want to do that too, right? That’s what I think about every day.”
