Lewis Hamilton Ferrari F40 a Driver's Ultimate Test

Lewis Hamilton’s social media blew up in April this year when he posted dozens of pics and videos of him hooning a Ferrari F40 in Japan (check the bottom of this post). But the car seen then was borrowed. Soon enough the seven-time F1 world champ will be able to so the same as he has just purchased his own F40.

“My very own F40,” Hamilton said on Instagram. “This is the car of my dreams and has been for as long as I can remember. As a kid I dreamt of having one. When I joined Ferrari last year I made sure to have one with me on my first day at Maranello. That’s how much it means to me.”

The Car That Outlived Its Creator

The F40 was made to celebrate 40 years of the marque. Enzo Ferrari personally approved the project, the last one he ever did. The car arrived in 1987 with a Pininfarina shaped the body from carbon-fibre, Kevlar, and naked aggression. The 2,9-litre twin-turbo V8 delivered 352 kW, enough to push the 1 100 kg missle past 324 km/h. This made the F40 the first production car to breach 200 mph mark.

Everything unnecessary was deleted. Power steering, ABS, traction control, even door handles in their conventional form. The interior exposed raw carbon weave and offered little beyond seats, instruments, and the imperative to pay attention to the driving process.

The driving experience rewards commitment and punishes pretension. Turbo boost arrives as a distinct event, followed by a surge that demands concentration and quick hands. The car communicates directly through the unassisted steering wheel and seat, unfiltered by electronics. For a generation of enthusiasts who encountered the F40 on bedroom posters, it represented the absolute summit of what a road car should be.

Click here to read our own driving experience of an F40 in Maranello.

Hamilton’s Project

Hamilton could have bought just about any F40 in the world. Instead he opted to restore a ‘barn find’. The restoration is understood to involve Ferrari Classiche-certified specialists. Who better to restore a car that the guys who built it in the first place. And it seems that the resto is thorough. The twin-turbo V8 has been removed from the car, presumably for a complete rebuild. Pics and video on Hamilton’s Instagram show the engine out as well brakes and several other components undergoing refurbishment.

“These cars are works of art and incredibly rare, so when I found this one, covered in dust after being sat in a garage for over thirty years, I knew I had to bring her home. First to Maranello, where the master engineers and mechanics at the factory worked for weeks to bring her back to life. Massive thank you to everyone who had a hand in this project. This has truly been a dream come true. I can’t wait to share more with you all. Stay tuned …”

The Appeal

Hamilton’s daily environment consists of hybrid powertrains with efficiency targets, steering wheels dense with controls, and engineering departments that measure progress in thousandths of a second. The F40 offers none of this. Its engineering purity is of a different order entirely: lightweight materials deployed for simplicity, turbocharging for raw output rather than efficiency, and mechanical systems that preserve direct connection between driver and machine.