Lewis Hamilton drives Ferrari F1 car for first time as fans turn up in numbers

Lewis Hamilton waved to a crowd of waiting fans on Wednesday as he drove a Ferrari car for the first time since joining the Italian team for the 2025 Formula One 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 and wore a helmet with a new design in yellow with a prominent Prancing Horse logo.

Hamilton has shaken up F1 with his move to Ferrari after 12 years with Mercedes, where he won six of his seven world titles. The 40-year-old British driver has said he’s 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 after arriving at Ferrari’s Maranello headquarters on Monday for his first day at work with the new team.

F1 tightly restricts teams from testing current-specification cars, but the rules are less stringent for older cars like the SF-23 that Hamilton drove on Wednesday.