The early days of our current champions
A quarter of the current grid had not yet been born in 1998. The current McLaren pairing of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri had not yet entered the world, as had their fellow 2024 drivers Zhou Guanyu, Yuki Tsunoda and Franco Colapinto. .
But what about those who were around then? Coincidentally, there were three world champions on the grid at the start of 1998 (Schumacher, Hill and Villeneuve), marking the same number of title winners who are active in 2024, ahead of Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.
So what were today’s champions doing in 1998? Well, Alonso, Hamilton and Verstappen were 17, 13 and one year old respectively, so Verstappen’s racing career would not begin for a few years.
Alonso had been climbing positions in world karting championships and would make his single-seater debut in Formula Nissan in 1999.
Meanwhile, Hamilton had also impressed in karting, to the point that he joined McLaren’s Young Driver Development Program in 1998, three years after telling Ron Dennis at an awards ceremony that he would one day drive one of theirs. cars. The rest is history.
Drives like the one seen in the video below helped the Brit attract attention, with the youngster coming from the back of the field to win a Formula Junior Intercontinental karting race at Buckmore Park in Kent, England.