Yahoo Autos Lewis Hamilton’s first championship Mercedes F1 car heads to auction
The car Lewis Hamilton drove to his first Formula One win for Mercedes will hit the block Nov. 17 at an RM Sotheby’s auction in Las Vegas.
Named for its chassis, W04, the car won the Hungarian Grand Prix with Hamilton in the cockpit in 2013. It’s the only Mercedes F1 vehicle from the modern era not owned by Mercedes, by team principal and Chief Executive Officer Toto Wolff, or by Hamilton himself, according to the auction house. RM Sotheby's estimates its value to be $10 million to $15 million.
“This was the car that Hamilton kicked his career off with,” says Shelby Myers, the global head of private sales for RM Sotheby’s. “There’s this one Lewis Hamilton Mercedes in private hands, so you’re talking about a unicorn of a car. You’re not buying another one, unless you go to Lewis Hamilton or Toto Wolff.”
The car gained notoriety as the last Mercedes F1 vehicle with a V-8 engine before the series mandated smaller, quieter V-6 turbos. It was previously offered for public sale by Mercedes-Benz Classic in 2017. An RM Sotheby’s spokesperson declined to comment on the current owner. A spokesperson from Mercedes declined to comment on the sale.
A growing market
Mercedes is no stranger to record-setting F1 cars. A 1954 Mercedes W196 piloted by Juan Manuel Fangio, which sold for $29.6 million at a Bonhams auction in 2013, is the most valuable F1 car ever sold. The 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé, which sold for $142 million last year, remains the most expensive car ever sold publicly. It’s no accident that the Uhlenhaut coupé had been developed based off of Fangio’s W196 racer—the racing lineage runs strongly through Mercedes ranks.
Decommissioned cars like the Mercedes F1 W04, however, used to be considered little more than oversized paperweights. Now, they’re part of a growing number of high-dollar sales for more modern F1 vehicles.
The attitude shifted in 2017, when RM Sotheby’s sold Michael Schumacher’s Monaco Grand Prix-winning Ferrari F2001 for $7.5 million, a sum that obliterated estimates at the time. By 2022 another Schumacher Ferrari, a F2003-GA, sold for almost $15 million at an RM Sotheby’s sale in Geneva, the biggest public payment ever for an F1 car. In April the Ferrari that Schumacher drove to his first F1 World Championship sold for an estimated $9.5 million at a private auction in Hong Kong.
For many F1 fans, Hamilton has the same clout as Schumacher. The British driver has just as many F1 World Championship wins as Schumacher (seven) and a knighthood from his home country. His lucrative endorsement contracts include IWC and Monster Energy. In August, Hamilton signed a new contract with Mercedes that will keep him with the team through the 2025 season.
“In the contemporary era, Lewis Hamilton is by far the most influential driver, not just from a racing perspective, but what he’s done to transform the sport in terms of race and culture and fashion,” Myers says. “He’s not just a successful driver, he’s a personality, and I think his reputation will live on as someone who materially changed the sport for the better.”
