Inside The Restoration Of Lewis Hamilton’s 43-Mile Ferrari F40

Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari F40 spent more than 30 years stored in a private garage before he brought it back into the light. The previous owner drove it home after buying it new, parked it, and never really used it again.

Hamilton bought the car, a 1991-built F40 with just 69 kilometers (about 42.9 miles) on the odometer, and sent it to Ferrari's Classiche restoration program in Maranello. He documented the process in an eight-minute video he posted this week.

Lewis Hamilton Arrives At Monza In His New Ferrari F40

Photo by: Lewis Hamilton

Ferrari specialists carried out a full inspection and restoration before the car was started again under Hamilton's ownership. Hamilton has said the F40 needed surprisingly few new parts given how long it had been sitting.

Mechanics pulled the twin-turbo 2.9-liter V8 for a full mechanical check. That's when they found the detail that turned a routine restoration into a personal story. The engine block carries the stamp "Engine No. 44," the same number Hamilton has raced under since 2014.

The car went up on lifts for underbody work alongside the engine strip-down. That's standard procedure for a Classiche restoration, and still a lot of hands-on labor for a vehicle that had barely moved since new.

Hamilton did not try to preserve the grime that three decades of storage had left behind. He chose a full restoration instead, a choice that strips away the patina some collectors prize but brings the F40 closer to how it looked and ran leaving the factory in 1991.

The video closes with the restored F40 being uncovered and started for the first time. Hamilton has long wanted an F40, and finally owning one adds weight to seeing it run under its own power again after roughly three decades of silence.

He has since displayed the car with a plate carrying "44" to match the engine stamp, including at the 2026 Italian Grand Prix at Monza. "I'm unsure on how much to drive the F40, as its already low usage and now extensive restoration means it's likely one of the closest to factory examples surviving," Hamilton said.

What do you think?

That hesitation is the practical tension running through the whole story.

A 69-kilometer F40 with a fresh Classiche restoration is about as close to a time capsule as the model gets, and every mile driven now works against that rarity rather than adding to it.