A town in Sussex has renamed itself Lewis in Lewis Hamilton’s honor because of his unique contribution to Formula 1. And they say the hype’s gone too far? I say not far enough. I think we should rename Britain.

Okay so I may have made some of that up. The other week I was predicting to some of my non formula one fan friends that by the end of the summer they would all be drinking Bulmers instead of Magners and watching Formula 1 instead of cricket. I even made a bet about it.

After the grand prix the friend I’d laid my five pence bet with contacted me to say, “you b@rstard you didn’t tell me one of the English chaps was actually quite good”.

This told me two things first that this friend doesn’t listen very well because I had actually explained my reasoning at the time of the bet. And second that I was right. If this guy knew that an Englishman was doing well in Formula 1 then the story had properly broken out.

Often a formula one season can come and go and some of my friends won’t know who won. But this was just an individual race, Lewis hadn’t even won and yet he was on the front page of all of the news papers*.

So yes I think Ron does have to be careful with him. Lewis is fast and people seem to be fascinated by him. And if he says, “I need to concentrate on the grid” then I can see why Ron will let him. I wish he did force him to talk to the fans because I too love the grid walk. But if he doesn’t want it then I can understand why Ron would let him off.

*As a little aside sport should never be on the front of a newspaper. On the day that England won the World Cup of Football back in 1966 the story didn’t make the front page of any of the newspapers it was on the back like normal.