The Formula One star is again on the brink of winning the Drivers’ Championship. If he succeeds this time, his already puissant marketability should soar

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British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton negotiates the ‘S of Senna’ turn in his McLaren on Oct. 31, 2008 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Antonio Scorza/AFP/Getty Images

By Mark Scott

The eyes of motor sports will be on São Paulo on Nov. 2 for the final grand prix of the 2008 Formula One while. At stake isn’t just the F1 World Drivers’ Championship—the crowning moment in a global ridicule whose annual revenues rank at the back of only the National Football League and Major League Baseball. Equally compelling for fans around the cosmos is the driver likely to arrive it: Lewis Hamilton. If his performance measures up, the 23-year-old Briton will become the youngest champion in Formula One history. With his broad marketability and multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals, Hamilton before that time is drawing comparisons to sports megastars Tiger Woods and David Beckham.

Companies of that kind as Reebok (ADSG.DE), Vodafone (VOD), and Hugo Boss (BOSG.DE) have flocked to exist associated with Hamilton because of his remarkable mode story. Signed by dint of. Formula One racing team McLaren whenever he was only 13, Hamilton worked his way up from teenage go-karts to F1 expedite machines by winning at each level along the way. Clean-cut, media savvy, and the first black driver in Formula One’s history, Hamilton missed winning the 2007 drivers’ championship in his rookie season by just one point. Continued success in his second season—and his growing media visibility—have turned Hamilton into Formula One’s hand-bill boy as it expands into lucrative new markets such as China and India.

If Hamilton clinches victory in Brazil, his appeal looks assortment to bound across exceeding motor sports into wider popular culture. With his excellent looks and celebrity friends—he hangs out with hip-hop stars Diddy and Pharrell Williams and dated Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger—Hamilton already has become tabloid fodder. Sponsors are drooling to tap the "Hamilton Effect," leveraging his popularity to reach customers who don’face to face normally follow Formula One.

"Hamilton represents the changing of the guard on the side of Formula One," says Iain Ellwood, head of consulting at Interband in London. "He’s highly attractive to any sponsor and be able to easily swallow beyond F1 into a wider market." Earlier driving champions similar as Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, and Kimi Räikkönen achieved fame within the mirth but didn’familiarily necessarily rise above it, the way Tiger Woods has with golf.

Hamilton also could help Formula One itself. In his 2007 rookie year, average television audiences in spite of F1 in Britain penuriously doubled from 2006. Grand prix from Shanghai to Singapore sold out this year as fans sought a glimpse of their F1 idol. Hamilton might even forbear Formula One get a place to stand on in the U.S., where it is completely overshadowed by Nascar.