Lewis Hamilton said he felt "humbled" after becoming an MBE in the Queen's New Year Honours.

The Stevenage-born driver, 23, became the youngest winner of the Formula One championship after a dramatic finish to the Brazilian Grand Prix in November.

"It is a massive honour and incredible privilege to receive an MBE from Her Majesty the Queen," said Hamilton.

"It is the most amazing culmination to what has been quite a year for me and something I am very appreciative of."

Having come close to claiming the F1 drivers' championship in his debut season, Hamilton secured the 2008 title with a fifth-place finish at Interlagos.

The Englishman's title rival and local hero Felipe Massa won the race in his Ferrari but Hamilton passed Timo Glock at the final corner to push the Brazilian into second place in the drivers' championship.

"The support I have received from the UK as a whole has been fantastic and a huge motivation," added Hamilton, who turns 24 next month and now lives in Switzerland.


"This is not just a proud moment for me, but also for my family and every single person involved with the McLaren Mercedes Formula One team.

"I am also very humbled to be included on the Honours list alongside all the members of the general public who have been recognised for their tireless work in such varied and worthwhile arenas.

"It has been an outstanding year for British sport as a whole, and it is great to see so many fellow sportsmen and women being honoured."

BBC Sport Report........


Its been a great year for British Sport... Once Englands' football team finally failed to do anything.. We excelled in other sports.

Good to see he received an MBE, he really deserved it

Well done Lewis!

He does deserve it, he's a credit to both his sport and the nation.

Incidentally, the missus and I were talking about him t'other day in the car, with F1 coming to the BBC apparently they're talking about tying F1 in more tightly with shows like Top Gear and the like. Should be interesting to see if they can get Lewis back next season - after all he did awesomely well on a wet track in TG this year, be interesting to see how well he does on equal footings with the other former great F1 stars britain's produced.

It would be good if that was the case

Top Gear used to be very close to the RAC rally, and hosted specific rallying programs. If that sort of thing came back, then we might actually stand a chance of being able to see some motorsport on tv once in a while.

New presenters though, Id get bored of the 3 clowns messing around, and joking about the cars 24/7