Lewis Hamilton Makes an Iconic Arrival at Monza in His Ferrari F40

Lewis Hamilton has recently opened up about his purchase of a Ferrari F40, revealing just what the car means to the seven-time Formula 1 World Champion. First, he gave the world a look at his car in a recent Instagram post, shortly after it had been through a restoration at Maranello. On Thursday morning, he drove it to Monza, before posing for pictures with it behind the paddock while dressed in a smart suit, tie, hat and coat. It was by any standards a spectacular arrival at the venue that calls itself The Temple of Speed.

The car carries a UK license plate ‘44’, honoring Hamilton’s race number—which in turn was originally taken from the plate on the Vauxhall Cavalier sedan in which his father Anthony drove him to kart events when he was a kid. As it turns out,there is another almost mystical connection between the number 44 and his new purchase.

“It’s a dream car of mine,” Hamilton said of the F40. “I’ve been looking for one for a while, and I wanted one with low mileage. I wanted one with a story—and lots have come up in auction over the past couple of years, some with low mileage, but just not particularly special, or maybe the paint’s been redone or something like that. I wanted to find the most authentic one, and managed to come across this one that the owner had bought it, drove it from Maranello to his home, 69 kilometers, and then parked it and never started it again.”

It proved to be a remarkable time capsule. Hamilton was left with a big decision—should he keep it as found, or bring it back to life? “The passenger door had never been opened,” he said. “It just had this cover on it, and all this dust. Then the decision was kind of, ‘What do you do? Do you keep it as an art piece, keep it all dusty, or do you have them clean it up?’ So that took me a while to decide—and then I had them redo it, because I wanted to drive it. Because I realized, actually, what’s kind of crazy is ... I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure none of the Ferrari drivers in history have ever arrived in the coolest cars that they have, these iconic ones; the GTO or the F40. And I was like, ‘It has to be done.’”

It was then that a remarkable coincidence came to light. “What was also crazy is when they were taking the car apart to check it, firstly, it stood the test of time. Everything was still working. Hardly anything had to be changed. And when they took the engine out, they found out the engine’s number 44. It’s got stamped on the engine number 44. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘Did you know? You’ve got to be lying.’ So, it feels very much like fate. And I thought it was a real opportunity to kind of highlight the history of Ferrari in their home country, at their race ... and when am I ever going to get to do that again?”

Hamilton is embracing Ferrari’s heritage like no other driver before him, and it shows that the company is getting far more out of him that just his performance on track. “I mean, for me personally, I take it seriously,” he said. “It’s such a phenomenal experience to be in amongst this brand, and to see how it transcends the sport and how it’s touched people all over the world, the color and the logo and these iconic cars. I showed one of the members high up, like, the F40 I drove in Japan, and they’re like, ‘Oh, maybe next year you can use a Luce,’ and I was like, ‘It’s not the same as the F40.’”

Hamilton knows what he likes in a road car. “I think the nostalgic, iconic curves and lines that they used to build these cars back in the day, there’s just nothing quite like it. Obviously, you’ve got the F80, which is pretty cool, or the F50—but this one, for me, I just remember as a kid I had all these cars lined up and the red car, the F40, was the one. But it was so far from my thoughts that I’d ever have a chance to acquire one of those.”

And as for Thursday’s Monza F40 photo op with the suit, it didn’t happen by chance. It’s part of Hamilton’s efforts to cultivate an image that ties him and Ferrari together. “I think arriving at the race weekends ... getting to race and wear red is one thing, but outside of the sport, there’s so much more to do within fashion. And I love getting creative and coming up with concepts that most people don’t, at least within my team. The image that we came up with for the first image we did at Ferrari, the first year—that was my concept, my creation. And it was the same this weekend. I had that idea: ‘I want to turn up in this style, in this suit, in this way,’ to pay homage to this sport. But also just, get that moment, because it’s never going to come again.”