The automobile Lewis Hamilton drove to his first Formula One win for Mercedes will hit the block Nov. 17 at an RM Sotheby’s auction in Las Vegas.
Named for its chassis, W04, the automobile won the Hungarian Grand Prix with Hamilton within the cockpit in 2013. It’s the one Mercedes F1 vehicle from the fashionable era not owned by Mercedes, by team principal and Chief Executive Officer Toto Wolff, or by Hamilton himself, in accordance with the auction house. RM Sotheby’s estimates its value to be $10 million to $15 million.
“This was the automobile that Hamilton kicked his profession off with,” says Shelby Myers, the worldwide head of personal sales for RM Sotheby’s. “There’s this one Lewis Hamilton Mercedes in private hands, so that you’re talking a few unicorn of a automobile. You’re not buying one other one, unless you go to Lewis Hamilton or Toto Wolff.”
The automobile gained notoriety because the last Mercedes F1 vehicle with a V-8 engine before the series mandated smaller, quieter V-6 turbos. It was previously offered for public sale by Mercedes-Benz Classic in 2017. An RM Sotheby’s spokesperson declined to comment on the present owner. A spokesperson from Mercedes declined to comment on the sale.
A growing market
Mercedes is not any stranger to record-setting F1 cars. A 1954 Mercedes W196 piloted by Juan Manuel Fangio, which sold for $29.6 million at a Bonhams auction in 2013, is the most useful F1 automobile ever sold. The 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé, which sold for $142 million last yr, stays the most costly automobile ever sold publicly. It’s no accident that the Uhlenhaut coupé had been developed based off of Fangio’s W196 racer—the racing lineage runs strongly through Mercedes ranks.
Decommissioned cars just like the Mercedes F1 W04, nonetheless, was considered little greater than oversized paperweights. Now, they’re a part of a growing variety of high-dollar sales for more modern F1 vehicles.
The attitude shifted in 2017, when RM Sotheby’s sold Michael Schumacher’s Monaco Grand Prix-winning Ferrari F2001 for $7.5 million, a sum that obliterated estimates on the time. By 2022 one other Schumacher Ferrari, a F2003-GA, sold for nearly $15 million at an RM Sotheby’s sale in Geneva, the largest public payment ever for an F1 automobile. In April the Ferrari that Schumacher drove to his first F1 World Championship sold for an estimated $9.5 million at a personal auction in Hong Kong.
For a lot of F1 fans, Hamilton has the identical clout as Schumacher. The British driver has just as many F1 World Championship wins as Schumacher (seven) and a knighthood from his home country. His lucrative endorsement contracts include IWC and Monster Energy. In August, Hamilton signed a latest contract with Mercedes that can keep him with the team through the 2025 season.
“Within the contemporary era, Lewis Hamilton is by far essentially the most influential driver, not only from a racing perspective, but what he’s done to remodel the game by way of race and culture and fashion,” Myers says. “He’s not only a successful driver, he’s a personality, and I feel his popularity will live to tell the tale as someone who materially modified the game for the higher.”
Some buyers see the old F1 cars as status symbols, like a piece produced by a famous artist, or as a memento from a historic moment in sport. “This automobile was the beginning of the subsequent best dynasty in Mercedes history, the Lewis Hamilton-Toto Wolff era,” Myers says. “It’s comparable to a dynasty just like the Golden State Warriors or the Chicago Bulls.”
Other buyers repair the cars and race them. “I wish to call it wine and cheese racing,” says Art Hebert, a collector and amateur racer who sells vintage race cars via Motorsports Market. “It’s as much about having these great cars and the associations and going out to dinners and having fun with the great life—and in addition having this adrenaline rush.”
A spokesperson from RM Sotheby’s confirmed the engine and drivetrain remain within the Mercedes F1 W04; decommissioned F1 cars are sometimes sold without them.
Credit the rise in popularity to Liberty Media’s efforts to remodel F1 into a worldwide entertainment phenom. The corporate bought the series for $4.4 billion in 2017 and has seen the stock representing its F1 business greater than double previously 4 years. Liberty-championed promotions resembling Netflix’s Drive to Survive, which chronicles the seasonal pathos of several leading F1 drivers and teams, have broadened the appeal of really owning a used F1 automobile as well, says Myers.
“We expect to have a worldwide audience on this lot, clients from Asia, clients from the Middle East,” he says. “We’re seeing trophy hunters, too. Individuals who weren’t automobile people necessarily but who wanted trophy assets. They may want only one automobile, they usually want one of the best.”
Moving auctions upscale
RM Sotheby’s is hoping to capitalize on the F1 spectacle to diversify its business in an increasingly competitive industry. Online auction platforms like BringaTrailer.com and Classiccars.com have reduced the ego trip selling a automobile at auction used to supply. They’ve also mitigated the wariness that shoppers used to have about buying something without seeing it—or driving it—in person. Meanwhile newcomers to the auction industry, like Hagerty’s Broad Arrow, are forcing the old guard to get creative in how they maintain an edge with buyers and sellers.
The Mercedes F1 W04 sale, to be held at 4pm on the Awakening theater within the Wynn Las Vegas hotel, will happen the day before the ultimate of the first-ever Las Vegas Grand Prix. The multi-day F1 bash will include million-dollar hospitality packages, celebrity chefs, and three consecutive nights of performances headlined by J Balvin, Major Lazer and Mark Ronson.
Auction lots through the evening will include Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers jersey from his final game within the NFL, which has an estimate of $1.5 million to $2.5 million. If it sells in that price range, Brady’s castoff would beat the present record for the most useful football jersey ever sold. That title belongs to the San Francisco 49ers jersey that Joe Montana wore in two Super Bowls, which sold for $1.2 million earlier this yr.
The sale at RM Sotheby’s places the Hamilton automobile amongst that group of artifacts from elite moments in sports.
“What we’re attempting to do is create an environment and an event that you simply just wanna go to,” says Myers, noting that high-end catering, entertainment and star- power will all play a task within the Vegas sale. RM has long provided open bars during its more significant auctions, while competitors often provide a money bar. Now, it’s upping the ante. “These buyers might just wanna come to a very fun event, they usually have some disposable money, they usually say, ‘Hey, there’s this amazing Lewis Hamilton automobile. I could see myself putting that in my front room.’”
Attendance on the Mercedes F1 W04 auction is restricted to registered bidders and special invited guests. Viewers an also watch via livestream on the auction house’s website.
This Article First Appeared At www.autoblog.com
