Lewis Hamilton touches on Michael Schumacher being an inspiration in his move to Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton recently touched on Michael Schumacher being his inspiration while growing up. The German built a career by turning a perennial underperformed Ferrari into a title-winning juggernaut.

That achievement is still unprecedented as Michael Schumacher went on a five-year dominance with Ferrari from 2000 to 2004, a feat multiple world champions and elite talents have failed to emulate. In the years gone by, Fernando Alonso tried to do it, but could not achieve that. Then Sebastian Vettel tried his hand at Ferrari, but failed as well.

Lewis Hamilton already has a massively successful career, he's won as many titles as Michael Schumacher and has more than 100 wins to his name. Talking about his move to Ferrari, Hamilton said that a part of it was inspired by the fact that he had seen the German achieve success on the team when he was a kid.

Talking to the media, including Sportskeeda, the Brit said:

"I think for every driver, I think growing up, watching the history. Schumacher in his prime."

"I think probably all of us sit in our garage and see the screen pop up, and you see the driver in the red cockpit, and you wonder what it would be like to be surrounded by the red. You go to the Italian Grand Prix, and you see the sea of red Ferrari fans, and you can only stand in awe of that."

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"Winning a Ferrari a huge challenge" - Lewis Hamilton

Talking about how winning with Ferrari could be a huge challenge, Lewis Hamilton touched on how the team had not won much since 2007.

Since that time, Felipe Massa lost the title in the last race in 2008. Fernando Alonso had the same happen to him in 2010 and 2012 while Sebastian Vettel's title hopes faded away in 2017 and 2018.

Talking about how he used to emulate Michael Schumacher in the car, Lewis said,

"And it's a team that's not had huge success, really since mostly obviously from Michael's days, but since 2007. And I saw it as a huge challenge. And without a doubt, even as a kid, I used to play on the GP2 as Michael in that car. So it definitely is a dream. And I'm really proud of that."

What Schumacher did on the Italian team continues to be a benchmark for so many drivers. Could Hamilton end up achieving that? It would be interesting to see if he can.