Lewis Hamilton’s first Mercedes winner makes $18 million

This is the 2013 Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 W04. It’s also the first Mercedes F1 with which Lewis Hamilton won a Grand Prix for the Silver Arrows. And that, apparently, makes it worth $18 million.

It’s happy weeks at RM Sotheby’s headquarters. After the record sale of the 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, another record fell. This time for most expensive contemporary Formula 1 sold at auction. In the run-up to the Las Vegas F1 Grand Prix, RM Sotheby’s held an auction, with this as the highlight: Lewis Hamilton’s 2013 Mercedes AMG F1 W04.

Hungarian GP win

It’s a highly relevant car of course. This was Hamilton’s first Mercedes chassis. His move from McLaren to the poor-performing Mercedes team at the time was deemed a risky move. The 2013 season would be the last one run with 2.4-litre V8 engines, aided by the KERS kinetic energy recovery system that could add a burst of up to 80 hp to supplement the 750 fuel-fed horses.

Hamilton would use this car, chassis #04, for 14 of the season’s 19 races. This was also the car with which Lewis Hamilton took victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix, his first F1 victory behind the wheel of a Mercedes-AMG F1 car. Hamilton showed Mercedes’ improving form with a total of five podium finishes in 2013. Four times, he was in this car.

Beating the estimate

Up to this point, Lewis Hamilton ties with Michael Schumacher as F1s most successful driver. Both have seven world titles to their name. The auction makes clear a Hamilton Mercedes F1 featured prominently on someone’s shopping list. The W04 easily beat pre-sale estimates ($10-15 million) to ultimately reach $18,815,000, including premiums. The previous record – again, for contemporary F1s – was for Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari F2003-GA, which made 14,690,000 Swiss francs (around $15 million) in 2022.