Mercedes reveal Lewis Hamilton’s touching note to Kimi Antonelli

Mercedes have revealed that Lewis Hamilton left a special handwritten note for Andrea Kimi Antonelli ahead of his F1 debut in 2025.

Seven-time world champion Hamilton is departing Mercedes after 12 seasons to make the switch to rivals Ferrari for next year. The 39-year-old Briton turned in a brilliant comeback drive from 16th on the grid to fourth in his final race with Mercedes at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Speaking on a special episode of F1’s Beyond The Grid podcast, Mercedes race team co-ordinator Stephen Lord provided insight into Hamilton’s “emotional” goodbye to his driver room following the last round of the European season in Monza.

“It's quite an interesting insight into Lewis that perhaps people don't see,” Lord said. “It was after the race in Monza, obviously the last European round. Lewis was upstairs. He did the engineering debrief.

“In Europe we have the race base, where we have like an engineering suite on the top floor and at the back of the engineering suite, the drivers have their own rooms, so they have a room where they have massage beds and all of their kit is laid out ready. Then they have a bathroom with a shower and a toilet.

“Lewis had finished engineering. I think the engineers had left so Lewis was upstairs in the room on his own. I popped up, grabbed a couple of bits, came back down the stairs, and Lewis came down the stairs ready to leave and head home.

“He got to the bottom of the stairs and he stopped, then he turned around and he went back upstairs. I thought ‘he’s forgotten something,’ didn't think much of it. He came back down about 10 minutes later and he grabbed a guy that works for the team, Carlos, who's our Head of Race Team Logistics.

“And you could see that Lewis was really quite emotional and he grabbed Carlos and said, ‘it's only just occurred to me, I'm never going to see that room ever again. I'm really emotional. I can't leave. I feel kind of sad to walk away from that room because I've been in that room for so many years and I'm never going to see it again.’ He was really quite touched that he was leaving it behind.”

‘Pretty special’ note to Kimi Antonelli

Hamilton will be replaced at Mercedes by 18-year-old teenage sensation Antonelli, who will partner George Russell as part of the Silver Arrows’ new-look driver line-up for 2025 and beyond.

Lord revealed that Hamilton had left Antonelli a touching note in what will become the Italian’s driver room from next season.

“I walked into the room and on the wall there’s quite a long, handwritten note,” he said. “It was a note to Kimi and it was basically welcoming him to his new room, and it was wishing him the best of luck, saying some really nice things about the team and how, ‘if you care for them, they'll care for you because they're a great team.’

“I thought, ‘wow, what a nice thing to do.’ And actually we've had glass cut and it's now covered in the room so it will be there forever more. I thought I'd just go into the bathroom.

“I walked into the bathroom and next to the toilet, above the toilet roll holder, was ‘Lewis was here’ with a big smiley face and I thought, ‘okay, I like that.’ But the note to Kimi was pretty special.”