Lewis Hamilton shock career change he'd be ideal for despite F1 commitment

However, compared to most athletes, Hamilton would certainly be best prepared for a switch, considering his F1 experience. He recently said the bobsleigh is the sport he would try out, were he to walk away from his contract at Ferrari, which expires next year, and from F1 completely, to become a winter Olympian. Tracey, who is leading the Jamaicans in Italy, recently tipped Hamilton to be an emphatic pilot - the bobsleigh team member who controls the vehicle from the front. But instead of the ice cold and slippery corners of the track in Cortina, Hamilton is in Bahrain, carrying out pre-season tests of his scuderia. 

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While he zips his new motor around and around in the Middle East, Tracy offered his thoughts on how the 41-year-old Brit would fare in his freezing world. He said to Reuters: "I think he [Hamilton] would do well. When you see people like Lewis Hamilton going around curves [at] 200-250 miles an hour, he's going to have the eye for it to be able to manoeuvre a sled ... so, personally, I think he would do very well."

Hamilton's paternal grandparents are from the Caribbean island of Grenada. He as previously said the Disney movie Cool Runnings - which chronicled the journey of the iconic Jamaican bobsleigh team in the 1988 Calgary Winter games - inspired his F1 journey. 

Speaking of his love for bobsledding, Hamilton recently said: "If I was to do a Winter Olympic sport, it would be bobsledding. I always wanted to do bobsledding. There's no Grenadian team, so maybe I would take my best friend Jan and then get a couple of other characters from Grenada and then create a bobsleigh team."

While Hamilton will be cheering the Jamaicans on, his full focus is on Bahrain. After a disappointing debut campaign with the Scuderia, Hamilton has been working with a new Ferrari engineer in Carlo Santi, after Riccardo Atami was moved to the Ferrari academy team. 

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As things stand, it's currently unclear as to whether Santi will be in situ for the long term. Either way, Hamilton admitted he is feeling more confident and more connected to the 2026 Ferrari car. He said: "I think I always try to enter into a season with confidence, but of course you’re faced with all sorts of different challenges along the way.

"I think this is definitely for me… I’ve obviously gone through quite a bit, and for me left everything – all of last year is behind me. I really felt like I spent a lot of time rebuilding over this winter, refocusing, really getting my body and my mind to a much better place. In general, just making sure that I’m able to arrive feeling better.

“I generally feel personally in the best place that I’ve been in a long, long time, with rearranging things within my team. And then the car, we’ve started off quite well so far. It’s an exciting time with this new generation of car as well, because it’s all brand new – we’re all trying to figure it out on the go.

“Last year we were locked into a car that obviously I inherited – this is a car that I’ve been able to be a part of developing on the simulator for the last 10 months, eight months, so a bit of my DNA is within it so I’m more connected to this one, for sure.”