I’m sorry folks, if there is anyone out there that thinks the British press won’t be heavily biased in its F1 reportage this year then they need to wake up and smell the petrol fumes.

The frothy brine around the mouths of every British F1 press hound is only going to get worse – Lewis Hamilton has already transcended the sport, with many people recognising him from his appearance in the tabloids rather than on the racetrack.

Hamilton has been seen gallvanting around with a carousel of lovelies, he presented the "Most Addictive" award at the MTV Europe Music Awards 2007, and due to the fact that he is good, young, and British we can expect nothing but wall to wall Lewis Hamilton. Add to that his mixed race background in a white dominated sport has the same whiff of history in the making as Tiger Woods.

'Is there anything more quintessentially British than capturing the heart of the nation with your sporting prowess only to finish second?'


Even a moderately successful British youngster would have been leapt on by the British media, but we are talking about someone who is charismatic and confident far beyond his years, who last year failed to win the drivers' title with McLaren by one solitary point, who got up four wins and six poles And all this in his debut F1 campaign no less.

And is there anything more quintessentially British than capturing the heart of the nation with your sporting prowess only to finish second? In the pantheon of glorious failure on this Scepter’d Isle, Hamilton’s first season catapulted above Boadicea, Dunkirk and all the Brits flailing around at Wimbledon straight in at number one. That was the deal clincher, the fact that he came so close and missed out meant that he had captured the nation's heart forever.

Hamilton’s relationship with the press is clearly symbiotic, Formula1 is just one of many sports competing for the attention of the British public, and the devotion of the press is the oxygen on which F1 propels itself to the top of Britons' minds. Take a look through all the F1 season previews and you will be hard pressed not to spot Hamilton’s grinning head bobbing up on page after page like a clutch of gaudy buoys.

Strictly speaking Formula1 isn’t a sport of nations, it is a sport of several teams and a phalanx of different drivers all set to a cosmopolitan backdrop of racetracks in countless different countries, but just like Tennis, it is nigh on impossible not to have an undercurrent of tubthumping British bias always threatening to burst through.

In addition to the ridiculously talented young whelp that this article focuses on we also have David Coulthard, Jenson Button, and Anthony Davidson foisting their very British talents on us.

The most glaringly obvious prediction this F1 season? The British press will be biased towards the British drivers.