Lewis Hamilton’s first winning Mercedes F1 car is sold for £15m

Eyebrows were raised in the usually staid world of car auctions by the razzmatazz of RM Sotheby’s sale in Las Vegas ahead of the grand prix. The venerable auction house conducted its business amid pumping techno music, a light show and a special glass stage at the Wynn’s Awakening Theater.

The star lot was Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes W04, in which he won the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2013. It was billed as the only modern-era F1 car not owned by the Mercedes team or driver himself and achieved a sale price of £15m. That made it the most expensive modern-era F1 car to be sold at auction.

More modern race cars are becoming popular among private collectors. In 2022 Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari F2003-GA which won both the drivers and constructors’ championship in 2003 sold for almost £12m at RM Sotheby’s sale in Geneva, at the time a record sum for a modern F1 car. The most expensive single-seater race car of all time remains Juan Manuel Fangio’s 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196, which sold in 2013 for £19.6m