Its a fact of life: people that get to the top of anything these days tend to be ... er... difficult to get on with. Fully rounded, agreeable people tend to think about the consequences of their actions for too long to get to the front of the queue.
Frankly, for a young man in the spotlights of the F1 circus, Lewis Hamilton is a remarkably 'nice guy'. I'm intrigued by him. His 'facing the public' persona is slightly annoying, since it plays to everything we hate about F1. He's an unruffled, team player, who's appreciative of his boss. A corporate cocksucker in other words.
But his driving style says something else. He's happy to let the car move around, he's a bit impulsive, a bit of a risk taker. At the same time as the plainly coached persona says "contemporary, globalised business", his driving says "scary sport in which people die".
I think people are reacting quite unconsciously to this contradiction in Hamilton.