Lewis Hamilton’s Heartfelt Handwritten Note To Mercedes Successor Antonelli Revealed

Wednesday, 11 December 2024 at 19:33

Mercedes race team coordinator Stephen Lord revealed a heartwarming story about Lewis Hamilton's last day at the team's European race base.

2024 was Lewis Hamilton's 12th and final season with the Mercedes F1 team. After the end of the year, the seven-time world champion will head to the team of which he dreamed as a child - Ferrari.

From the start of the season, it was clear that this would be the 39-year-old's last year with Mercedes. He has said that he really tried to take in, enjoy, and appreciate every single moment.

One of these moments came after the 16th round of the season at Monza Circuit in Italy, which was the last European race in the 2024 calendar.

Motorhomes are exclusive to European races, and Hamilton realized it was the last time he had been in his room inside a Mercedes motorhome.

He later confessed he got pretty emotional. But he didn't share as much as Mercedes team coordinator Stephen Lord, who was there to witness everything and told Beyond the Grid podcast:

"Lewis had finished engineering, I think the engineers had left, so Lewis was upstairs in the room on his own."

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"Lewis came down the stairs, ready to leave and head home. He got to the bottom of the stairs, and then he stopped, and turned around and went back upstairs."

"He came back down about 10 minutes later and he grabbed a guy that works for the team – Carlos, who's our head of race team logistics – and you could see that Lewis was really quite emotional."

"And he said, 'it's only just occurred to me, I'm never going to see that room ever again.'"

"He said ‘I’m really emotional, I can’t leave, I feel sad to walk away from that room because I’ve been in that room for so many years and I’m never going to see it again’. He was really quite touched that he was leaving it behind."

Lord then shared how Lewis Hamilton shared a beautiful hand-written message for the next Mercedes driver, who will take his place in the same room - Kimi Antonelli.

"I walked into the room, and on the wall, there’s quite a long handwritten note, and it was a note to Kimi."

"It was basically welcoming him to his new room, wishing him the best of luck and saying some really nice things about the team and how if you care for them, they’ll care for you because they’re a great team. And I thought ‘wow, what a nice thing to do’."

Hamilton has a great relationship with his prodigy successor and has been a great supporter of Antonelli as they had a chance to work together in Mercedes.

However, as the seven-time World Champion moves to Ferrari in 2025, it's gloves on as the two might potentially fight for the Drivers' and Constructors' Championship, driving for rival teams.