Lewis Hamilton drives Ferrari F1 car for the first time

The seven-time world champion delighted Italian fans with his debut behind the wheel of a 2023-specification F1 Ferrari.

Lewis Hamilton, Formula One’s most successful driver of all time, waved to a crowd of waiting fans as he drove a Ferrari racing car for the first time since joining the Italian team for the 2025 season.

Hamilton was behind the wheel of a 2023-specification Ferrari SF-23 bearing his racing number, 44, at the team’s Fiorano test track on Wednesday and wore a new helmet design in yellow with a prominent Prancing Horse logo.

The 40-year-old British driver set out for his first lap at 9:16am local time in light fog and twice waved to a crowd of about 1,000 spectators, who had gathered on a nearby bridge despite the cold and wet weather.

Hamilton moved to Ferrari for the 2025 season after 12 years with Mercedes, where he won six of his seven world titles. He has said he is fulfilling a childhood dream.

“I’ve been lucky enough to have achieved things in my career I never thought possible, but part of me has always held on to that dream of racing in red. I couldn’t be happier to realise that dream today,” he said on Monday after arriving at Ferrari’s Maranello headquarters.

F1 tightly restricts teams from testing current-specification cars, but the rules are looser for older cars like the SF-23 that Hamilton drove on Wednesday. Official preseason testing for the new season’s cars starts in Bahrain on February 26 and will continue till February 28.

Hamilton will partner with Charles Leclerc at Ferrari, who have been without a driver’s title since 2007 but hope to change that in the 2025 season, which begins with the Australian Grand Prix, scheduled from March 14 to 16.

British racer Lewis Hamilton waves to the crowd as he drives the Ferrari SF-23 during his first official days as a Scuderia Ferrari F1 driver at Fiorano Circuit in Fiorano Modenese, Italy on January 22, 2025 [Clive Rose/Getty Images]