(CNN) Anthony Hamilton will watch his son Lewis Hamilton try to wrestle the world championship from his Mercedes rival Nico Rosberg over the last four races of 2016.
He told CNN Sport that the agonies of watching his eldest son race in Formula One haven't changed over the last 10 years of his career.
"It's the same nerves, the heart palpitations when the race gets going," Hamilton Snr. smiled ahead of Sunday's US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas.
With an acute understanding of the emotions of watching your child compete at the highest level, he is still encouraging other parents to help their children become sporting heroes.
"When people say to me 'my son or my daughter isn't good enough' I think you know what I'm sorry but they are great," explains Hamilton.
"We are all great people -- it's about how you nurture your kids.
"Everything is possible and I like to think we are an example of that because from where we came from who would have thought Lewis would be at the top of motorsport?"
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Being the father of a three-time F1 champion
Anthony Hamilton has traveled all over the world to support his son, and three-time world F1 champion, Lewis.
Father and son celebrate Lewis' second F1 world championship in 2014.
The pair fought off media attention to celebrate the moment Lewis won the title at the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi.
They shared a similar moment of joy at Monte Carlo in 2008, the year of Lewis' first F1 title success.
But it hasn't all been easy. During Hamilton's debut championships in 2007, his seventh place finish in Sao Paulo, Brazil (pictured), meant that he finished the championships in second place, a point behind Kimi Räikkönen.
Anthony is always on hand to offer Lewis advice before each race. "I always send Lewis messages that say 'Dude, focus, be positive. You know how great you are and just continue believing in yourself,'" he told CNN.
Hamilton Snr. has recently founded his own business. He hopes that KickTrix, a "keepy-uppy" machine, will help budding footballers become Premier League stars.
The device, costing £250 ($305), is developed so that kids can practice football indoors. "There are a lot of good young players," said Hamilton, "but a lot of them don't make it because they don't have the skills necessary to control the ball."
'We came from nothing'
Separated from his eldest son's mother Carmen, Hamilton raised his family in a council house in Stevenage, a town 30 miles north of London.
He worked multiple jobs to fund his son's career and dedicated both their lives to the peripatetic lifestyle of competing in go-karting and then in the junior single-seater categories.
Lewis Hamilton would go on to become a three-time F1 world champion.
"We came from nothing and I didn't have anyone telling me to do this or do that, I had to learn myself," Hamilton Snr. explains.
"But one thing I knew was that you've just got to be positive and believe in yourself. Sometimes people use that term 'believe in yourself' flippantly but the reality is you have got to believe."
Business venture
Despite his background in motorsport, Hamilton Snr has now designed a machine -- KickTrix -- to help budding soccer players blossom into Premier League stars.
It allows children -- and adults, too -- to practice "keepy-uppies" indoors and then apply their new, honed ball control skills to the 11-a-side game.
"I looked at the plethora of players that come into football and into the Premier League and all the British kids that aren't playing in the Premier League and I'm wondering what's the difference?" he explains.
"Maybe it's the weather? When you're abroad you can play longer but you can't play when it's raining outside in the UK.
"I wanted to design something that actually gave our young players a little bit of a leg up which they can use indoors because the more times you kick a ball and the more time you practice, the better you are.
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"There are a lot of good young players but a lot of them don't make it because they don't have the skills necessary to control the ball.
"Maybe I could have been a good footballer if I'd had the opportunity to play football in the house without breaking things!
"If you do 20,000 kicks with the KickTrix machine you'll be able to 1,000 free keepy-uppies with the ball."
At £250 ($305) the machine isn't cheap, but Hamilton stresses that it's another kind of investment that is more valuable to a gifted child.
"It's about whether you give your son or daughter time, whether you're there mentally and physically to support them," he adds.
Mercedes vs. Mercedes: Race for the title
Mercedes teammates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg size each other up as the season begins in Melbourne. On race day, Rosberg starts where he left off in 2015,
winning in Albert Park. A poor start relegated Hamilton from pole position to sixth but he fought back to finish second.
In Shanghai, Hamilton starts at the back after an engine problem in qualifying. He fights back to seventh but
Rosberg wins again to take a chunky 36-point lead in the championship.
President Vladimir Putin was on the podium to hand out the victory laurels to Rosberg once more. Another engine problem left Hamilton back in second as his teammate
moved into a 43-point lead.
But the Dutch teen only wins after the Mercedes rivals took each other out on the opening lap at the Circuit de Catalunya.
A thrilling duel between the Mercedes stars ends when the two cars make contact on the last lap. Hamilton survives
to take the win while Rosberg limps home in fourth, seeing his lead cut to 11 points.
Hamilton earns a hug from Hungarian model Barbara Palvin as he takes the lead in the world championship for the first time in 2016
thanks to a win in Budapest. The British driver moved into a six-point lead over Rosberg, who finished second.
A month later, Hamilton had to start at the back of the grid after Mercedes chose to make a raft of engine changes in Spa. Hamilton worked his way up to third, but Rosberg romped to the checkered flag
for his first win at the legendary circuit.
Rosberg is on a roll once more as he storms
to his first win at Monza and cuts Hamilton's championship lead to just two points. The defending champion had delivered an electrifying lap to start on pole but a poor getaway cost him and he eventually finished second.
Hamilton arrived in Kuala Lumpur determined to reignite the title battle, and everything was going smoothly until lap 43 of the race when his engine caught fire. "Oh no, no," moaned Hamilton as he was forced to retire. Rosberg finished third
behind Red Bull duo Ricciardo and Verstappen to extend his lead to 23 points.
Time to pull on the victory t-shirts! Mercedes wraps up its third straight constructors' championship in Suzuka.
Hamilton once again takes the spoils, winning
his first Mexico Grand Prix. Rosberg follows him home in second and, as F1 heads to Brazil for the penultimate race of the 2016 season, just 19 points separate the Mercedes drivers.
The Mercedes rivals share the podium at Interlagos as Hamilton dominates a rain-hit thriller to claim his first
Brazilian Grand Prix victory ahead of Rosberg. The result sends the title race down to the wire in Abu Dhabi.
The moment of triumph: Nico Rosberg finishes second behind Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi to secure a first world title -- 34 years after his dad, Keke, won his.
Strained relations and pushy parents
Hamilton carefully managed his eldest son's career all the way to F1. Lewis was signed to the McLaren team's driver development program aged just 13 and made his F1 debut in 2007.
A jubilant Hamilton was waiting in the team's garage when his son won a thrilling first world title in Brazil one year later.
But the father and son pairing dissolved Hamilton's relationship as manager to the F1 star in 2010 under reportedly strained circumstances.
Hamilton Snr. explained that it can be "extremely difficult" to balance guiding your child's career and avoid morphing into the archetypal pushy parent.
"There are a lot of parents who want their kids to be successful and the kids want to do something else," he says.
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"You have to find exactly what your child is interested in doing then you have to say 'OK I'm going to dedicate a certain period of life making sure you can achieve that objective.'
"But you can't push them too much, it's about gentle encouragement.
"If your kid looks like they have the potential to be great then you're going to push harder. There is a fine line between being a parent and a manager.
"If you step over the line and become a pushy parent it's likely that the young kids will want to push back and won't try hard. While they love what they're doing they don't love what you're doing and it's important they do love it."
The perfect 10
A smiling Lewis Hamilton and a dejected Nico Rosberg after October's United States Grand Prix where the Briton clinched his third Formula One world title. The Mercedes driver insists that the working relationship is good with his German teammate.
Hamilton's third World Championship -- his second in two years -- was won with three races to spare. The win at the Circuit of the Americas near Austin, Texas was his 10th of the 2015 season.
"It's the greatest moment of my life," Hamilton said after the race. "I pushed and pushed. I hope I can inspire people to never give up. It's just crazy to think I'm now a three-time world champion. I can't find the right words to express the feeling, but it's the greatest I've had in my life."
The 2014 champion got his world title defense off to a winning start with success at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne in March. Hamilton and Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg dominated, with the Briton controlling the race on the Albert Park street circuit and ultimately seeing off the German.
After finishing second to Rosberg at the Malaysian Grand Prix, Hamilton edged back ahead of him in the world standings after triumphing at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai in April. The 30-year-old captured his 35th Grand Prix win with a pole-to-flag victory, although runner-up Rosberg claimed he had ruined his race by driving slowly.
A week later, Hamilton made it a hat-trick of triumphs from the opening four races when he crossed the line first at the Bahrain Grand Prix. He managed to hold top spot despite losing his brakes on the last lap, beating Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, who finished second. "I'm gunning for a third title," Hamilton said. "I was able to pull through and we need to keep pushing now, as I know we will."
Second and third-placed finishes at the Spanish and Monaco races enabled Rosberg to cut Hamilton's advantage in the championship to 10 points, but he got back to winning ways at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal in June. "Did I need this?" asked Hamilton at the victory celebrations. "Yes, I think I did."
In July, it was a home triumph at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone for Hamilton. The Mercedes man, who had finished second in Austria a fortnight earlier, battled past Williams duo Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas after losing the lead off the start line to claim his third British Grand Prix win. "I started to tear up on that last lap," Hamilton said after the race. "I was gunning the whole way and I really just wanted to do it for you guys. I'm going to keep pushing for this championship."
Hamilton finished off the podium for the first time all season at the Hungarian Grand Prix, but August's Belgian Grand Prix at Spa saw him convert pole position into a sixth first-placed win of 2015. He remained in control of the race throughout and, finishing ahead of second-placed Rosberg, extended his lead in the championship to 28 points.
September's Italian Grand Prix at Monza saw Hamilton finish more than 25 seconds clear of Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel to take top spot and extend his championship advantage to 53 points with seven rounds remaining -- but only after surviving a stewards' investigation. "The stewards are satisfied that the team followed the currently specified procedure supervised by the tire manufacturer for the safe operation of the tires," a statement said after Mercedes was investigated on the grounds that the tires were below the minimum permitted pressure.
September started and finished with victories for Hamilton as he followed up the disappointment of being forced to retire in Singapore with success at the Japanese Grand Prix. He took the lead early from pole-positioned Rosberg before cruising to his eighth win of the season to take him 48 points clear at the top of the championship with five rounds left. "It was important for us to strike back. We didn't bring our A game in Singapore and we had to bring it today," he said.
Mercedes claimed the Constructors' World Championship after Hamilton's victory at the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi in October. The 30-year-old capitalized after Rosberg, who started from pole, was forced to retire with a throttle problem. A ninth win of the season set up the chance to land his third world title at the United States Grand Prix two weeks later.
That third world title was won as Hamilton picked up a 10th victory of the season, his 43rd overall, at the Circuit of the Americas. He overtook Rosberg on the 49th of 56 laps to claim an unassailable 76-point lead at the top of the championship. "I just can't believe I'm sitting here. To my family, I love you. To the team, thank you so much," Hamilton said. "I'm overdue a drink with the team!"
Hamilton was interviewed on the podium after the race by singer Sir Elton John.
Hamilton is only the 10th driver in history, and the first Briton since Sir Jackie Stewart in 1973, to become a three-time world champion. The first of Great Britain's 15 world champions to claim back-to-back crowns, he joins Stewart, Jack Brabham, Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna on three titles, with only Michael Schumacher (seven), Juan Manuel Fangio (five), Alain Prost and Vettel (both four) having achieved more success.
Nic Hamilton, 'the bigger superstar'
Hamilton Snr. also guided his younger son Nicolas, with wife Linda, into a career in motorsport against seemingly insurmountable odds.
The 24-year-old, who recently raced in the British Touring Car Championship in a modified car, has cerebral palsy, a condition that leads to severe problems with movement, posture and coordination.
"Nic is probably the bigger superstar," says Hamilton. "He is an amazing young man.
"A year to 18 months after Nic was born he wasn't walking and we couldn't figure it out. When we went to the hospital they said 'your son won't walk and here are these glasses because by the way he's going to be blind.' It was devastating for Linda and I.
"A little bit like Lewis, Nic has had tough love from me but huge love from his mother. Everything that was done for him with tough love was done positively.
"He is so independent now. He will take nothing from anybody, he wants to do everything himself."
Text from Dad: 'Dude, focus, be positive'
It has not been the easiest season for the eldest Hamilton son, whose F1 title defense has been hampered by engine reliability.
The frustrations seemed to boil over at the last race in Japan when the Mercedes driver amused himself on social media during an official media conference leading to criticism that he showed a lack of respect.
"Lewis is still the same person he always was but he lives in the bubble of motorsport," says his Dad.
"The human side of Lewis is what you saw recently. 'I know you guys have a job to do but I'm not really enjoying it. Why don't we try this for a change?' I think Lewis had a good point."
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What advice would Hamilton give his eldest son as he faces a daunting task in the final four races of the year?
"The advice is always the same," he says. "We are older, we are wiser and we always love them and care for them whatever the situation, and we're always there for them.
"It doesn't matter how old you are and whether you want to listen to your parents or not.
"I always send Lewis messages that say 'Dude, focus, be positive. You know how great you are and just continue believing in yourself.'
"Lewis might be a triple world champion but he's still like you and me, he's still the same. It hurts when you don't win and things go wrong, but typically he's a believer."
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When asked by CNN what lessons he has learned as a father to sporting sons that he would pass on to parents who would like their children to achieve, he answers: "Success is relative, but it's disappointing if you don't try."
The days of crafting a career together may be over but it is sound advice that his superstar son, even at the age of 31, will take onto the track as he faces the biggest title fight of his career.