31 August 2023 , 14:42
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Honda tried to sign Lewis Hamilton before the Brit agreed to start his Formula 1 career with McLaren.
Hamilton made his F1 debut more than 15 years ago, racing for McLaren alongside Fernando Alonso. He made an immediate impact, fighting for the title in his maiden season in the sport before achieving that goal in his sophomore year.
A few years later, he left for the Mercedes team he still calls home today. Six more titles followed and he will hope to add to that number now that he has committed another two years of his F1 career to the Silver Arrows, in a new contract announced on Thursday.
None of that would have happened, though, had he made one different decision right back at the start. Choosing McLaren started Hamilton down the path that he is on today, but who knows what would have happened had he gone with the other option on the table.
His father Anthony was courting interest from other teams and Honda were the ones who came forward with a proposal. A three-year deal was offered, starting in 2007, which would have seen him earn a guaranteed £1m per season.
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It's a far cry from the £50m he will earn annually in 2024 and '25 thanks to his new Mercedes deal. But Honda were also offering plenty of incentives on the side which would have seen the Brit earn a lot more if he could meet some performance goals.
It would have been tough for him to do so, though. While McLaren gave him a car in which he could immediately mount a title fight, at Honda Hamilton would have been lumbered with a car which was ninth slowest on the grid across both the 2007 season and '08 seasons.
Interestingly, though, assuming he would have honoured the third year of that contract, a first title might still have come early in his career. That's because the Honda team became Brawn GP for 2009 and won the constructors' championship, while Jenson Button became F1 world champion for the first and only time.
The following season, the Mercedes team which exists today was born. Its first few years in F1 were slow going but, if Hamilton stuck around through those leaner years, then perhaps he might still have been with the team that he is today to achieve all the success he has managed.
We will never know how that alternate reality would have played out. All we do know is that, with seven world championships and 103 F1 race wins under his belt, Hamilton is unlikely to hold any regrets about the career choice he made right at the beginning.