The greatest superheroes are the ones who are also the most relatable. We pay our hard-earned money and use our hard-to-come-by leisure time to watch them operate in the clouds, eager to witness them accomplishing what we previously thought was undoable. But we love them most when they show their best selves down here with us on the ground. Hurting. Crying. Loving the same things — and creatures — that we do. Proving that ultimately, no matter what they have achieved on whatever unattainable level, they are still made up of flesh and feelings, as we all are.
That has always been Lewis Hamilton‘s true superpower.
He is the greatest to ever hold an F1 steering wheel, rewriting the grand prix record book every single time he is on the grid, and a man whose net worth was recently estimated at around $450 million. He walks the red carpet at the Met Gala wearing clothes from the future, has dated pop stars and supermodels, and just co-produced a blockbuster movie with Brad Pitt.
Then, there Hamilton was on social media, with a paw in his hand. It was the foot of his companion Roscoe as the 12-year-old bulldog took his last breath late Sunday night, ending a four-day coma caused by a bout with pneumonia.
“I had to make the hardest decision of my life and say goodbye to Roscoe,” he wrote of the decision to put his friend to sleep. “It is one of the most painful experiences and I feel a deep connection to everyone who has gone through the loss of a beloved pet.
“Although it was so hard, having him was one of the most beautiful parts of life, to love so deeply and to be loved in return.”
If you’ve never been there, that might read a bit over the top. But if you have lived through that horrible moment of looking at the vet through tear-filled eyes, the same eyes that your pet had just been peering into with their own eyes of confusion and pain and an animal-to-human connected feeling of, “Damn, this is really happening right now, isn’t it?” then you know entirely too well that Hamilton has never been more down here with us, in the human emotional mess, than he was in that moment.
And then he shared it with his 41 million Instagram followers? The night I endured that impossible decision for the first time, more than a decade ago, I just sat in my truck in the parking lot of the animal ER and wailed. I didn’t want to go home and share that with my wife, let alone the entire world.
But this is who Hamilton has always been.
I started covering motorsports for a living 30 years ago. The first time I heard his name wasn’t very long after that, a karting champion from England, a preteen Black kid in a sport where no one else looked like him, with a smile and talent built for the spotlight. The first time I interviewed him in person was 2007.
He was 22 years old and in his first F1 season, already a race winner and already hailed as the future of Earth’s most popular racing series. You know what he wanted to talk about? How he used to always race as Michael Schumacher when he played F1 video games but then, “when I signed with McLaren, I would always be Kimi [Räikkönen].” Then he added that none of that lasted very long because his family had to sell his PlayStation to rustle up money for a new helmet.
In the years since, our conversations have taken place once every few years. I don’t pretend to know him nor do I believe that he has any idea who I am, but if you heard those interviews, you would think that we went to high school together. I have found myself in the middle of those chats consciously thinking to myself, “Does this dude not realize how famous he is?”
He totally does. That’s what makes his relatability even more remarkable, and also what makes it so effective.
When he took the lead in F1 taking a visible stand for social justice during the unforgettably tumultuous summer of 2020, he did so by telling his own personal stories. The bullying he endured at school back home in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, because of the color of his skin and the differing skin colors of his white mother and Grenada-born father. That only got louder as he moved up the racing ladder and the number of people around him grew, including an infamous moment in 2008, the year he won the first of his seven world titles, when fans at the Spanish GP showed up in blackface and wigs while F1 brass did and said nothing.
He has repeatedly laid his soul bare about his entire life, from racism and his broken home to his estrangement from his father (now reconciled) and yes, the deaths of his beloved dogs. Coco passed away in June 2020, at the height of the world’s pandemic lockdown, at the age of six. That’s when we all got to know Roscoe, who routinely crashed every TV interview that Hamilton did that season from his homes around the world and his hotel rooms on the grand prix circuit.
Roscoe was adopted in 2013, the same year his human moved over to drive for Mercedes. Hamilton and Roscoe were together for six world titles and 84 wins. They were also together during the struggles of recent years, including this season’s disappointing slog at Ferrari. Roscoe’s Instagram account gained 1.4 million followers as he traveled the world several times over. He even received a credit in the “F1” movie.
The rest of us mere mortal dog lovers, we would have loved to have given our furry friends that kind of dream life. That’s why we loved Roscoe. Because he was able to experience the stage our dogs never had, just as Hamilton has lived out the auto racing fantasy that so many of us dreamed of as kids.
So, whether it’s the seven-time world champion with that paw in his hand, or Dale and Amy Earnhardt grieving their beloved Junebug earlier this month, or Simon Pagenaud paying tribute to Norman, the Jack Russell Terrier who stood in the Indianapolis 500 winner’s circle and even received his own baby Borg-Warner Trophy and is still very much with us. Let’s be thankful that our racing superheroes have that companion they can lean on with that unconditional love, a wagging tail and wet nose, whether their person won or lost.
And when they are forced to part ways with those companions, let’s be thankful that those four-legged friends kept those heroes grounded down here with us.
