Lewis Hamilton has had a mixed start to life at Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton has outlined his dream to design his own supercar during his F1 stint with Ferrari, with plans to work on an F44 machine over “the next few years.”

Hamilton has endured a mixed start to his Ferrari career following his lucrative switch from Mercedes ahead of the F1 2025 season.

Lewis Hamilton reveals Ferrari F44 supercar dream

After finishing a distant 10th on his debut in Australia earlier this month, Hamilton converted pole position into victory in the sprint race at the Chinese Grand Prix to take only his third win of any kind since the start of 2022.

However, Hamilton’s joy soon turned to disappointment as the seven-time World Champion and team-mate Charles Leclerc were both disqualified from the main event in Shanghai for separate offences.

While Leclerc’s car was found to be underweight, Hamilton was excluded for excessive wear to his skid blocks.

It marked the second time in the last 18 months that Hamilton has been disqualified for excessive skid-block wear, with the then-Mercedes driver suffering the same fate at the 2023 United States Grand Prix.

Despite an underwhelming start on track, Hamilton’s move to Ferrari has already proven a commercial hit with team partners Puma reporting an eightfold increase in sales of Ferrari merchandise since the seven-time World Champion’s arrival at Maranello.

Hamilton has revealed that he plans to turn his attention to building his own Ferrari supercar based on the legendary F40 machine during his spell with the Scuderia, with plans to call it ‘F44’ in a nod to his F1 race number.

Speaking at a recent fan event, he said: “One of the things I really want to do is design a Ferrari. I want to design an F44.

“Baseline of an F40, with the actual stick shift. That’s what I’m going to work on for the next few years.”

Hamilton famously posed alongside a Ferrari F40, described as his favourite supercar, for his first official photograph as a Ferrari driver outside the office of late team founder Enzo Ferrari in January.

It emerged after Hamilton’s first visit to Maranello that his smart attire was a direct nod to the late Mr Ferrari, who was often photographed wearing a suit and overcoat in public.

The image of Hamilton alongside the Ferrari F40 rapidly became the most-liked F1-related Instagram post of all time, with celebrity F1 fan Jeremy Clarkson and Kurt Klaus, the 90-year-old founder of long-serving Mercedes sponsors IWC, among those to recreate the photograph online.

The F40 was released in 1987 to mark Ferrari’s 40th anniversary and holds the distinction of being the last model to have been personally approved by Mr Ferrari before his death in August 1988.

Hamilton’s plans to build a Ferrari supercar have emerged after Davide Valsecchi, the 2012 GP2 champion and a respected F1 pundit in Italy, questioned the team’s decision to sign the seven-time World Champion.

Valsecchi claimed that Hamilton, who turned 40 in January, no longer comes with a guarantee of success after three years of operating at a “low performance” level.

And he claimed that Red Bull driver and reigning four-time World Champion Max Verstappen may have been a better choice for Ferrari.

Asked if Ferrari were wrong to sign Hamilton, Valsecchi said: “It would be stupid to say that.

“In testing he was flying and then he showed up like a star. Without him you wouldn’t have had all this return on image. At Maranello, they have already won [financially].

“Of course, with Verstappen you would have had number one on the track. With Lewis you don’t.

“He’s fast in the wet, he doesn’t wreck as many cars, he’s reliable – but for three years he’s had a low performance.

“At 40 you can’t be like you were at 25. If you’ve lost even two tenths of a ceiling, you’re not ahead of Charles.”

Pressed on whether he would prefer his beloved Inter Milan to win football’s Champions League or Ferrari end their long wait for an F1 World Championship, Valsecchi sided with the latter – but only in the event of a Leclerc triumph.

He said: “The red, but only if Leclerc wins.”