Lewis Hamilton is going into hiding in the land of Heidi. A day after Stevenage Council said that it would name a street after the town’s most famous son, Hamilton has announced that he is fed up with the human traffic caused by his rise to fame. He will move to Switzerland to escape the attentions of the public and media.

The Briton’s childhood hero was Ayrton Senna, but now he is following in the footsteps of Phil Collins. James Blunt, Tina Turner and the man who founded Ikea also have homes in Switzerland – as do Bernie Ecclestone, Kimi Raikkonen, Michael Schumacher and more than 100 billionaires.

“Over there, people don’t come up to you, they leave you alone,” Hamilton said. “I’m going to a country that I don’t know, but it’s very exciting.”

True, the skiing is better in Switzerland than in Stevenage. Petrol is 71p a litre and the motorway speed limit is a zippy 75mph. But the chances of knocking over a goat on the way home from the cheese shop have to be higher than on the M25, and will Hamilton find the country’s lack of passion for motor racing relaxing or boring?

This, after all, is the land where the trains run on time and the racing cars do not run at all. Cowbells, yes; screaming V8 engines, no. Until this year, time-trials were the only legal kind of motor sport in Switzerland. In June, the Swiss Parliament voted to lift a ban on racing that lasted 52 years. It was outlawed after the 1955 crash in the Le Mans 24 Hours race that killed more than 80 spectators and a driver.

“It was a tough decision,” Hamilton said. “My dream for years was to move to London - I stayed at a friend’s house this weekend in London and I woke up in the morning and just knew it was where I wanted to be. When I was coming up [through the sport], I knew there were sacrifices you have to make. But you lose your ability to go places – you don’t understand what that means until you get there and you struggle to lead a normal life.

“I haven’t been able to spend much time with my friends or my family – it’s not like a normal job, you’re travelling all the time, you live out of your suitcase and it’s tough to manage that and still live a normal life. When everybody knows you, it makes it so much harder to do normal things. I can’t go to the cinema. I go to the bathroom in a petrol station and people come in there for autographs.”

While Nigel Mansell favoured the Isle of Man, Monte Carlo has long been the residence of choice for Formula One stars. Not only is it a tax haven, you can get some practice in for the Monaco Grand Prix by driving from your seafront apartment to the supermarket. However, Schumacher has built a luxury home on the shores of Lake Geneva, within yodelling distance of the city where Hamilton is believed to have a flat.

Hamilton said that his relationship with Fernando Alonso, his McLaren Mercedes team-mate, is better than many believe. “Me and Fernando get on as well any other two people working together,” he said. “We’re not best friends and he doesn’t call me up to come to my house, but we say ‘hi’ – sometimes we play PlayStation, sometimes we have dinner together. At the end of the year we had a big hug and we said what a phenomenal year it had been and I said it had been a pleasure working with him.”

Now they can invite each other to fondue parties: Alonso also has a flat in Geneva.