Claim: Sports Personality of the Year was given to Lewis Hamilton.

Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton , MBE -LRB- born 7 January 1985 -RRB- is a British Formula One racing driver from England , currently racing for the Mercedes AMG Petronas team . A three-time Formula One World Champion , he is regarded by fellow and former drivers as one of the greatest Formula One drivers in the history of the sport . He won his first title with McLaren in 2008 before moving to Mercedes , where he won back-to-back titles in 2014 and 2015 .   In December 1995 , at the age of ten , he approached McLaren team principal Ron Dennis at the Autosport Awards ceremony and told him , `` I want to race for you one day ... I want to race for McLaren . '' Less than three years later McLaren and Mercedes-Benz signed him 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 drove for McLaren in 2007 , making his Formula One debut 12 years after his initial encounter with Dennis . Hamilton 's contract for the McLaren driver development program made him the youngest ever driver to secure a contract which later resulted in a Formula One drive .   Coming from a mixed background , with a black father and white mother , Hamilton is the first black driver to race in Formula One . Hamilton commented on this , saying `` The way I see it , my colour is an advantage in that it 's something people talk about '' , `` Being the first black man does n't matter much to me personally , but for the sport itself it probably means quite a lot . ''   In his first season in Formula One , Hamilton set numerous records while finishing second in the 2007 Formula One Championship , just one point behind Kimi Räikkönen . He won the World Championship the following season in dramatic fashion , becoming the then-youngest Formula One World Champion in history before Sebastian Vettel broke the record two years later . Following his second world title in 2014 , he was named BBC Sports Personality of the Year . In 2015 , he became the first British driver in history to win consecutive F1 titles , and the second British driver to win three titles after Jackie Stewart . He also became the first English driver to reach that milestone . He is the first driver in the history of F1 to have made the podium after starting 20th place or lower at least 3 times . He is the only driver in the history of the sport to have won at least one race in each season he has competed to date , with McLaren from 2007 until 2012 , and with Mercedes since 2013 . He has more race victories than any other British driver in the history of Formula One . His Grand Prix victories is the second highest of all-time having surpassed Alain Prost 's total of 51 at the 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix , behind only Michael Schumacher at 91 . Hamilton also holds the record for most wins in the season without winning the World Championship , after winning 10 times in the 2016 season where he finished runner-up to teammate Nico Rosberg .