World champion Lewis Hamilton has revealed why he opted to keep the race number 44 rather than sport the traditional number 1.

One of the less publicised new rules in 2014 saw the introduction of permanent race numbers, whereby F1 drivers now have a number, chosen by them, for the length of their entire career (in F1).

Though (2013 champion) Sebastian Vettel chose the number 5, he raced with the world champion's number 1 on his car. However, 2014 champ Hamilton has opted to stick with his permanent number 44.

"Everyone can use number one when they win the championship but it's irrelevant for me," the Mercedes driver told reporters at the Circuit de Catalunya having concluded his pre-season preparations.

"Forty four means more to me than number one," he insisted. "It doesn't mean I'm not number one. 44 is my family number. It's the number I had when I first started racing. I won my first championship with 44. It means something to me.

"The number one itself, Vettel's had it, Schumacher's had it, all the champions have had it. None of them had 44. 44 is mine."

Numerologists regard the number 44 as a magical number, the number of efficiency, focus, discipline, confidence, conscientiousness and wholeness, it is regarded by some as an 'angel number'.

Negative traits however, include, poorly proactive, greed, resistant to change, Machiavellic, cynicism, non-interactive, indifferent and power-hungry.

Numerologists also point out that the number 44 can be reduced to a single digit... 4 + 4 = 8.

8, of course, being Romain Grosjean's number.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by RDFox, 03/03/2015 13:04

"Speaking as a Yank whose original background in motorsports was NASCAR, I always felt it kind of silly to reassign car numbers each year anyway--of course, I'm also used to the car number being requested by and assigned to the TEAM, not the driver, and thus, even after Silly Season, there was a familiarity to the grid at the start of the new year, because even if drivers changed rides, the car numbers, liveries, and sponsors tended to stay the same from year to year.

Indeed, I think that *not* changing car numbers to represent the current champion helps add to a driver's "legend"--continuing with the NASCAR example, would the blue #43 car or the black #3 car have been as iconic and (in the latter case) intimidating sights if we hadn't seen each one carrying the "defending champion" decal seven times? Or, in a more modern example, would the blue-and-silver #48 car be as iconic and intimidating if we hadn't seen it carrying that same decal five years in a row?

The result is that, to NASCAR fans, car numbers are firmly associated with drivers who stay with their team for a long time. By way of example, two jokes among fans in the 1990s both start with a NASCAR fan's child being asked, in kindergarten, to count to ten. In one version, he counts, "Park, Rusty, Earnhardt, Marlin, Terry, Martin..."; in the other (more popular with those whose favorite drivers had had run-ins with Dale Earnhardt in the past), it was "1, 2, 3 YOU BASTARD!, 4..."

Indeed, the connection between the number and the driver is a massive selling point (even though it's now been 14 years since his death, there are *still* huge sales of Dale Earnhardt merchandise ranging from t-shirts to transparent/outline-only car window decals that display nothing but his car's stylized "3"), and anything that strengthens that connection is a good thing in trying to turn the sport from one where the cars are the stars (a harder and harder sell as GP2 gets closer and closer in performance at far lower cost) into one based around the star power of the drivers themselves."

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2. Posted by Hondawho?, 02/03/2015 12:03

"Allowing the baseball capped person to use #44 is a negotiation tactic I would imagine? It may well backfire on him, insisting that he uses it! If I were Mercedes I would be insistent making sure it was #1 on the car.

I think Ron Dennis was wise to let him go, his ego will get the better of him. He also won the BBC Sports (non) personality of the year so that didn't help! "

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3. Posted by Pyrope, 02/03/2015 1:33

"Jack Brabham had 44 at one time (1970 Italian GP) so its isn't as though no former F1 champions have run with that number. Maurice Trintignant won the 1955 Monaco GP carrying that number as well, and quite a few drivers other than Trint (including the great Roy Savadori) used number 44 on multiple occasions for World Championship drives. He's right that no other driver has been strongly associated with that number, but then that's simply not how F1 worked up until last year."

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4. Posted by Kiwikaze, 01/03/2015 23:19

"And 4-4=0

Never cared for maths."

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5. Posted by Burton, 01/03/2015 19:44

"Always thought the team would insist he used the #1. Fair play to them."

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6. Posted by Skidmarks, 01/03/2015 17:13

"Do numerologists also mention that 50% of 2 digit numbers add to a single digit?
If you treat "8" as "08" then 54% add to a single digit."

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7. Posted by Editor, 01/03/2015 10:56

"D'oh!"

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8. Posted by gturner38, 01/03/2015 10:50

"Your numerologists are a bit off. Yes, 4 plus 4 equals 8, but that's not Vettel's number. It's Grosjean's. Vettel is number 5."

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Hamilton: 44 is mine

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