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Lewis Hamilton has exceptional taste, and now that he’s driving for Ferrari, the coolest brand in automotive, he’s letting his creative ideas fly. The seven-time Formula 1 champion joined the team ahead of the 2025 season and has already made an impact by claiming points at the Melbourne Grand Prix and winning the sprint race at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai. Now, he’s extending his influence off the racetrack with key endorsement deals, too.
The British driver signed a deal to become the face of Lululemon, he’s wearing $1 million Richard Mille watches (as part of his Ferrari deal), and now, he has his eyes on designing a Ferrari road car that he wants to call the “F44,” as a tribute to the legendary F40.
During the Australian Grand Prix, where he was mostly hidden from the media, he told Motorsport.com that it was his dream to create a road car. “One of the things I really want to do is I want to design a Ferrari. I want to do an F44,” he told the publication. “Baseline of an F40, with the actual stick shift. That’s what I’m gonna work on for the next few years.” Built in the late 1980s, the Ferrari F40 is often considered to be the greatest road car ever created and was the last car approved by Enzo Ferrari, who died just after production in 1988.
If Lewis Hamilton were to design the successor to the Ferrari F40 (with a manual transmission), it would mark the first time a manual transmission had been added to a Ferrari road car since 2012. The brand has made it clear that quick-shifting “F1-style” gearboxes are the way of the now and the future. However, bespoke, low-production manual transmission hypercars are on trend right now, and brands like Pagani and Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA) have created businesses out of selling these low-production vehicles.
Ferrari has cashed in on this theory with the release of the 1100 hp twin-turbo, hybrid V6-powered F80, a successor to the La Ferrari. However, as it’s a production vehicle, it’s bound by strict European emissions restrictions. We explained why the car doesn’t sound very good in this article, and this is another factor that Lewis and Ferrari would have to navigate if they were to create this Ferrari F44 (named after his 44 race number).
Whether or not Ferrari plans to build this car is purely speculation at this point as his comments to Motorsport.com make no specific mention of whether or not Ferrari is on board with the idea. If it were to come to fruition, however, it would become one of the most exciting releases from Maranello in years, and would certainly provide an alternative to cars like Pagain, GMA, and even some of Aston Martin’s special releases.
