PUBLISHED ONJuly 28, 2023 10:00 AM
My Gamer Life is an AsiaOne original series where gaming professionals and aspirants in Singapore share the highs, lows, successes, and failures through personal stories on how gaming has defined the course of their lives.
A little nudge from his idol Lewis Hamilton was all Ar Muhammad Aleef needed to light his own path, becoming a champion in his own right.
Aleef, also known as AleefHamilton, shared with AsiaOne in an interview for our video series My Gamer Life about how he met his hero Lewis as a child — the first of many times in his career thus far.
"Whenever a kid approaches him, he always makes time for them, and I was that kid back then," Aleef, 24, said.
Aleef's father managed to sleuth out exactly which hotel Lewis, 38, was staying in by looking at the sponsor logos on the website for the event the Formula One (F1) star was attending in Singapore, and brought Aleef along.
"We were like the only family hanging out at the hotel lobby at like five in the morning waiting for him," Aleef recalled with a smile.
He met Lewis and shook his hand, exchanging a few words with him.
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"I was like, 'I want to be just like you'... he said, 'You can do it!'
"He told me, 'If I can do it, you can do it too — don't listen to anyone else who says you can't. Believe in yourself.'"
He's clearly taken those words to heart — to date, he's won multiple championship titles both regionally and internationally, cementing his name as one of the best sim racers in the world.
Even as he's honing his craft, Aleef has made the dean's list twice for his studies in business analytics at Ball State University in the US.
Aleef has also gotten the chance to meet and speak with Lewis on multiple more occasions.
He told AsiaOne: "I never want my last win to be my peak — I always want to make my peak the next one, and the next, and so on."
Watch our video for the full interview with Aleef.
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