At Mercedes, everyone is doing their part to put young Andrea Kimi Antonelli in the best possible condition. 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 awaiting the Italian who celebrated his 18th birthday in August and who will arrive directly at Mercedes. Thus, the Englishman wanted to be part of this support process in order to facilitate his adaptation and above all to 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 am very moved”
The action took place on the sidelines of the Italian Grand Prix in September, the final round of the European tour. On site, the man expected at Ferrari took the time to say “goodbye” to his box in the Mercedes motorhome, while preparing the future of the one that will be his former team from 2025.
« It’s a side of Lewis that people don’t necessarily knowexplains Stephen Lord, race coordinator at Mercedes, 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 sort of room for the engineers on the top floor and at the bottom of it the pilots have their own dressing room, that is to say they have a room where they have massage beds and where all their equipment is prepared. They then have a bathroom with a shower and 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, came back down and so did Lewis, ready to leave and go home. When he got to the bottom, he stopped, then turned around and went back up. I figured he’d 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 that Lewis was very emotional. He told Carlos: “I just realized that I will never see this room again. I am very moved. I can’t leave. I feel a little sad to leave this room because I have been around it for so many years and now I will never see it again“. »
It was then that Stephen Lord went back up to collect the pilot’s last belongings to discover a nice surprise. “ I walked into the room and on the wall there was a long hand written messagehe continues.
It was addressed to Kimi. He 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 it’s a great team . » Mercedes for its part decided to preserve this message by protecting it with a glass plate placed on it. The class of the champion and a gesture that Andrea Kimi Antonelli will probably never forget.
READ ALSO > Antonelli does not want to “be considered the replacement” for Lewis Hamilton
