Lewis Hamilton’s race-winning 2013 Mercedes Formula 1 car was sold for £15.1million during the recent Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend.
Chassis #04 of the Mercedes W04 challenger was put up for public sale by classic car auction house RM Sotherby, hosted by TV personality James Corden.
The car, the first of Hamilton’s Mercedes collection to be put to auction, carried a pre-sale estimate of £8m to £12m, but ended up comfortably surpassing that.
But the amount didn’t beat the record for an F1 machine, which remains at the £19.6m Juan Manuel Fangio’s 1954 title-winning Mercedes W196R was flogged for in 2013.
Having made the switch from Mercedes to McLaren over the winter, Hamilton raced Chassis #04 in 14 of the 19 rounds of his debut season with the German marque.
The now seven-time World Champion picked up a solitary victory that year at the Hungarian GP before the summer break, before Red Bull won the remaining nine.
Hamilton bagged a further four podiums on top of that breakthrough win, including three in Malaysia, China and Belgium that were driven with the sold chassis in use.
The auction, held at Wynn’s Awakening Theater, also sold a Ferrari race suit for £102,000 suspected to have been worn by Michael Schumacher at the 2003 Italian GP.
Meanwhile, a replica helmet from McLaren F1 driver Lando Norris raised a total of £8,700 for St. Jude Children’s Hospital.
However, a 1990 Ferrari F40 GT, did not hit the listed reserve price, noted as the minimum amount of an auction item, and therefore failed to sell in Las Vegas.
Mercedes to McLaren? Or did I miss something?