Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton MBE (born 7 January 1985 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire) is a British Formula One racing driver, currently racing for the McLaren Mercedes team, and is the youngest ever Formula One World Champion.

At the age of ten, Hamilton approached McLaren team principal Ron Dennis at the Autosport Awards ceremony in December 1995 and told him, "I want to race for you one day...I want to race for McLaren." Less than three years later, he was signed by McLaren and Mercedes-Benz to their Young Driver Support Programme. After winning the British Formula Renault, Formula Three Euroseries, and GP2 championships on his way up the racing career ladder, he became a McLaren F1 driver for 2007, making his Formula One debut 12 years after his initial encounter with Dennis. Coming from a mixed-race background, with a black father and white mother, Hamilton is often labelled "the first black driver in Formula One".

In his first season in Formula One, Hamilton set numerous records and finished second in the 2007 Formula One Championship, just one point behind Kimi Räikkönen. He won his first World Championship the following season, ahead of Felipe Massa by the same margin of a single point. He has stated he wants to stay with the McLaren team for the rest of his F1 career.

Hamilton was named after American sprinter Carl Lewis. His mother, Carmen Larbalestier (now Carmen Lockhart) is white British, while his paternal grandparents emigrated from Grenada to the United Kingdom in the 1950s, his grandfather (Oliver Hamilton) working in the London Underground.  Hamilton's parents separated when he was two and he lived with his mother and half-sisters Nicola and Samantha until the age of twelve, when he started living with his father Anthony, stepmother Linda and half-brother Nicholas, who has cerebral palsy.