LEWIS HAMILTON

The record-breaking F1 driver (and 5G ambassador for Vodafone) tells us about the tech he can’t live without, designing his own watch, and how watching races will change

- Matt Evans

WHAT PERSONAL TECH DO YOU RELY ON THE MOST WHEN TRAVELLING THE WORLD?

“I need my phone. I can never go anywhere without it. It’s naturally the single most important thing I have. It connects me, it keeps me going… within my business, but also connecting me with my friends and family, which is really difficult otherwise, particularly as I travel as much as I do.

“My headphones. I travel with my Bose [Noise Cancelling Headphones] 700 everywhere I go. Honestly, I listen to music every single day. I don’t know if I could live without that.”

WHAT OTHER TYPES OF TECH DO YOU TRAVEL WITH?

“Otherwise, I travel with a game case. I’ll have a games console – I travel with my PlayStation everywhere – so that when I get back to my hotel, if I’ve got time, I’ll play Call of Duty online with my friends. One of my friends is in LA, and one’s in Toronto, and one’s [in London] as well. So we just always link up on that.”

CLEARLY YOU LIKE GAMING. DO YOU THINK 5G WILL ACTUALLY IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF MOBILE GAMING?

“Massively. I was playing last night and my home internet went down. So I ended up using my phone. When a phone has 4G, it just has a bit of lag, especially when I’m connected to my friend’s server in California. So I get killed more. They’re so much quicker than some of the people they end up playing with. My friend tells me it’s because of the lag. So that’s always been a big issue with us.

“I remember playing with my brother. We’d play racing cars. We used to always play online racing games, and there was so much lag. We always wanted the fastest internet we could get. To hear this is coming out is going to be a game-changer in terms of how smoothly that runs.”