F1 champion Lewis Hamilton undergoes dream astronaut flight training
Seven-time champion will wear special race suit in Qatar to commemorate space training
Mercedes Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton underwent astronaut flight training in Texas and will commemorate the experience with a special race suit in Qatar.
The seven-time world champion will leave Mercedes at the end of the year to join Ferrari for the 2025 season.
As such, his partnership with IWC Schaffhausen will come to an end.
The watch company organised an astronaut flight training day for Hamilton in Texas, where he was able to take control of a T-38 jet aircraft.
Hamilton was put through his paces with extreme acceleration and deceleration, as well as manoeuvres to simulate the kind of G Forces (he reached 7.5 G) an astronaut would experience.
The programme Hamilton experienced is the same the crews of the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn go through for commercial spaceflight.
Comparing the flight to his experience of driving an F1 car, Hamilton said: "It’s very different to F1, the blood never leaves your head.
“When you’re turning the plane, you feel the blood leaving your body, your chest gets heavy and it’s hard to breathe.”
Hamilton will sport a race suit in this weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix carrying patch commemorating his spaceflight training day.
The Briton comes into this weekend’s penultimate round of the season off the back of a second-place finish at the Las Vegas GP behind Mercedes team-mate George Russell.
Hamilton and Russell are locked in a tight battle to crack the top six in the drivers’ standings.
Russell leads this race by nine points from Hamilton with two rounds to go in 2024.
Hamilton has won two grands prix in 2024 - the British GP and Belgian GP - having suffered winless campaigns in 2022 and 2023.
