Lewis Hamilton's nice gesture with Andrea Kimi Antonelli

At Mercedes, everyone is doing their part to put the young Andrea Kimi Antonelli in the best possible frame of mind. Including Lewis Hamilton who is preparing to hand over the baton after 12 seasons with the Silver Arrows.

The seven-time world champion is aware of the challenge that awaits the Italian, who celebrated his 18th birthday in August and who will be joining Mercedes directly. Thus, the Englishman wanted to be part of this support process in order to facilitate his adaptation and, above all, reassure him about this new adventure. And it is with a gesture as small as it is large that Lewis Hamilton “helped” his future successor.

" I'm very emotive "

The action took place on the sidelines of the Italian Grand Prix in September, the final round of the European tour. On site, the one who is expected at Ferrari took the time to say “goodbye” to his box in the Mercedes motorhome, while preparing the future of what will be his former team from 2025.

« This is a side of Lewis that people don't necessarily know about., explains Stephen Lord, Mercedes race coordinator, in the Beyond the Grid podcast. It was after the Monza race, the last European round. Lewis was upstairs where he debriefed with the engineers.

In Europe we have our motorhome, where we have a kind of room for the engineers on the top floor and at the back of it the drivers have their own dressing room, that is, they have a room where they have massage beds and all their equipment is prepared. Then they have a bathroom with a shower and a toilet.

Lewis had finished his debriefing. I think the engineers had left and Lewis was alone in the room upstairs. I went up, grabbed a few things, went back down and Lewis did too, ready to leave and go home. When he got downstairs he stopped, then turned around and went back up. I figured he had forgotten something, but I didn't think anything of it. He came back down about 10 minutes later and grabbed Carlos, who is the head of logistics for the race team.

You could see Lewis was very emotional. He told Carlos, “I just realized I’m never going to see this room again. I’m very emotional. I can’t leave. I feel a little sad to leave this room because I’ve been in it for so many years and now I’m never going to see it again.”". "

It was then that Stephen Lord went back up to collect the pilot's last belongings, only to discover a nice surprise. I walked into the room and on the wall there was a long handwritten messageHe says.

It was addressed to Kimi. It welcomed her to her new dressing room, good luck, said very nice things about the team and explained that if we take care of her, she will take care of us, because they are a great team. » Mercedes, for its part, decided to preserve this message by protecting it with a glass plate placed on top. The class of the champion and a gesture that Andrea Kimi Antonelli will probably never forget.

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