First We Feast / YouTube
Lewis Hamilton was all smiles joining Sean Evans for the ‘Hot Ones Challenge’ but in the eternal words of Mike Tyson… “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Nearly 5 minutes into the Hot Ones Challenge, the 103-time Formula One Grand Prix winner was gushing about his love of spice, saying “I do generally love hot sauce” and shared how he goes out of his way to try delicious hot sauces. Then, as with every Hot Ones Challenge, as the sauces went up exponentially in Scoville Units he got smacked in the face by spice.
One of my favorite parts of the Hot Ones Challenge is how the guests are dying from heat and their guard walls come crashing down as they begin to talk more candidly than they do in any other interviews because talking is a much-needed distraction from the volcanoes inside their mouths. In this case, Lewis Hamilton talks at length about how he doesn’t drink liquid in the car and how it saves him nearly 2 seconds over the course of a race. Then he talks about the one and only time he had to pee himself in the car…
That story wasn’t even 5 minutes into the Hot Ones Challenge for Lewis Hamilton! That man’s sensitive British taste buds couldn’t handle the heat. But he persevered, as all champions do, and then got smacked in the face by Da Bomb Hot Sauce and nearly wiped it in his eyes at one point which would have been an absolute disaster.
His tasting of Da Bomb Hot Sauce starts at 13:17. This is a hot sauce that is both brutally hot *AND* tastes bad. I’ve had the misfortune of sampling it myself and there is really nothing redeeming about the sauce at all. It’s torture from start to finish.
Like the champion he is, Hamilton doesn’t settle for just one bit of the wing smothered in Da Bomb Hot Sauce and finishes the wing in multiple bites. Did he have to? No. Was it the right decision to? Also, no. Nobody would have faulted him for just taking one big bite and moving on.
Seconds after eating the wing with Da Bomb, Lewis Hamilton says “I’m starting to precipitate” and that’s when I knew he was truly in a bind. His delicate British palate could not handle the overwhelming heat of masochistic American hot sauce torture. He did make it to the end but was quite literally pouring sweat at Sean Evans tried to grill him on F1 slang.