Early days for our current champions
One quarter of today’s grid had not yet been born in 1998. McLaren’s current pairing of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were yet to arrive into the world, as were their fellow 2024 drivers Zhou Guanyu, Yuki Tsunoda and Franco Colapinto.
But what of those who were around back then? Coincidentally, there were three world champions on the grid at the beginning of 1998 – Schumacher, Hill and Villeneuve – which marks the same number of title winners that are active in 2024 – step forward Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.
So what were the champions of today doing back in 1998? Well, Alonso, Hamilton and Verstappen were 17, 13 and one years old respectively, so Verstappen’s racing career would not start for another few years.
Alonso had been climbing the ranks in karting world championships and would go on to make his single-seater debut in Formula Nissan in 1999.
Hamilton, meanwhile, had also been impressing in karting, so much so that he joined the McLaren Young Driver Development Programme in 1998 – three years after famously telling Ron Dennis at an awards ceremony that he would one day drive one of his cars. The rest is history.
Drives like the one seen in the video below were helping the Briton to catch the eye, with the youngster going from the back of the field to win a Formula Junior Intercontinental karting race at Buckmore Park in Kent, England.