Lewis Hamilton Restores His Untouched 1991 Ferrari F40 From Decades of Dust

Lewis Hamilton has spent years chasing the Ferrari F40. As a child he kept a model of one. When he joined the Scuderia he made sure an F40 appeared in his first official shoot at Maranello. Last year he sold most of his personal collection and said only one car could pull him back into ownership. He found that car sitting under a cover in a private garage, exactly as its first owner had left it in 1991.

The original buyer picked up the bright red F40 from the factory, drove it home for 69 kilometers, parked it, and never started the engine again. The passenger door remained shut, and the dust simply collected on the paint and grille. Dead bugs even got caught in the air intakes. For over 35 years, the car sat there, a sealed time capsule, with the delivery miles still recorded on the odometer.



Hamilton preferred authenticity to a pristine collector’s item any day. When the car was finally in his hands, he had to make a straightforward decision: leave the muck in place or fix it and get it operating again. He chose Option B. Once he obtained the automobile, he had to decide whether to keep it as historical documentation in all its dirty splendor or to drive it about. He chose the driving option, and the automobile was delivered to Ferrari Classiche in Maranello, the factory’s restoration and authenticity section responsible for older models.


The Classiche team members placed the F40 on a hoist, jacked it up, and removed the wheels. Then they looked closely at the 2.9-liter twin-turbo V8. The rear suspension components were also removed for inspection, and the body panels and mechanical components were given some attention. People were surprised by how much of it was still in excellent condition. The paint was still spotless, the engine and transmission matched, and almost all of the mechanicals could be salvaged. Not a single component required replacement! (With the exception of a few unlisted pieces.)


As they were pulling it apart, Hamilton saw something unusual: the engine had the number 44 stamped on it, the exact number he races with in Formula One. And, to top it all off, he discovered that his UK registration plate was also the same. That was a genuine coincidence. After weeks of painstaking labor by the factory crew, the F40 looked virtually brand new. When Hamilton removed the final cover from the finished F40 and had a thorough look around, he simply circled it slowly and stated it appeared to have just left the showroom. He then sat in the driver’s seat, inserted the key, turned it over, and, for the first time in decades, heard the V8 engine start. The roar filled the workshop, and it wasn’t long before he climbed in and drove the car to Monza for the Italian Grand Prix, making a period-appropriate entry by parking against the old banking.


The F40 is one of the last road cars that Enzo Ferrari approved; only approximately 1,311 were ever built, and many have been driven, modified, and restored numerous times. Hamilton’s car, on the other hand, sat unchanged for the remainder of its life after that first 69km spin, until the factory that produced it restarted it. Now he has the car he’s wanted since he was a child, brought back to life by the same folks who did the same for all the F40s all those years ago, and it’s ready to be driven rather than merely put on a wall.