Hamilton’s curation of his profile remains a lesson to those aspiring to F1 megastar status

Gil Scott-Heron said the revolution will not be televised. Although Lewis Hamilton’s first Ferrari Formula 1 test was broadcast on Sky Sports F1’s YouTube channel and NOW TV’s TikTok profile. Does that count? Only – I’m reliably informed by my younger colleagues – if the presenters of the latter signed off by doing an apple dance and saying “skibidi toilet”.

The auguries for spectacle were not good. January at Fiorano and an event running to the FIA’s Testing of Previous Cars protocol meant mist and mizzle were in prospect, along with an obsolete car running on purposely irrelevant tyres. Hardly cause to open up a live blog – oh, what, you did?

But this is Lewis Hamilton we’re talking about. So, even by the misfiring standards of Ferrari’s haphazard attempts to communicate with those not fortunate enough to be able to afford one of its products (and I’m not talking about the branded pencil cases), this became not just an event, but a significant moment.

Nine years and five world championships have passed since that day in early 2015 when Bernie Ecclestone described Hamilton as “the best champion we’ve had” and lamented the low-wattage nature of any of his rivals in terms of box office. Ironically enough the principal object of Bernie’s ire that day, Sebastian Vettel, belatedly discovered the importance of having a profile when he took up the sword and shield of social justice – only to discover that billionaire team owners aren’t keen on that sort of thing, especially when you’re not delivering on track.

Perhaps more germane to the point, Seb Vettel’s Celebrity Litter Pick isn’t a programme even the UK’s most notorious scheduling toilet, Channel 5, would commission to sit between Dogs Behaving Badly and A&E: When Patients Attack.

In the interim, despite the arrival of a thrusting US-based media conglomerate in the commercial driving seat, wall-to-wall social media exposure, and a vastly popular fictionalised version of F1 on Netflix, not much has changed. Only Lewis Hamilton driving a Ferrari for the first time, even when tiptoeing in an old one on sub-par tyres around an unsuitable circuit, could attract this much interest.

It may have only been a shakedown in a two-year old car, but Hamilton's first run in a Ferrari was box office

Photo by: Ferrari

Hamilton well knows the power of image and its influence on his value. His hand – and those of his inner circle – could clearly be seen in the stage management of this debut, from the very first publicity shot of him standing in front of Enzo Ferrari’s famous house, garbed in an expensively tailored suit and cape, with an F40 completing the mise en scene.

Cynics might have laughed that perhaps the F40 was a suitably retro getaway car as he roared off to a Dracula cosplay party. But, as my Motorsport.com colleague Emily Selleck amply decoded, every aspect of the shot was carefully considered.

Subtle messages abounded, from the seven open windows acting as a visual metaphor for Hamilton’s seven world championships to his Christian Louboutin boots with their on-brand red soles. Although perhaps channelling the look of Al Pacino in The Godfather was a misstep given what happens at the end of that saga.

Every official image of Hamilton released this week has been carefully planned and selected – and, perhaps above all, timed – to secure maximum impact

Permitting Enzo’s house to be deployed as a prop demonstrated the extent to which Ferrari, as an organisation, grasps the significance of Hamilton’s arrival. Aside from permitting Michael Schumacher to install gym equipment in one room, Ferrari has preserved this residence as a time capsule, the holiest of holies, a shrine to the founder.

What, you wonder, would Enzo have made of this fawning over a mere driver? As the 1961 world champion Phil Hill once recalled, “When one of us did win I sensed a certain reluctance on Ferrari’s part to share the laurels with the driver, to pay him on the back and thank him for a job well done. It was more like Ferrari felt the victory was doubly his – he had not only managed to build a car that was better than all the other cars but a car that was also good enough to foil his driver’s natural destructiveness.”

It was in this very building, via the famous phone which still resides upon Enzo’s desk, that Il Commendatore received the call informing him of Eugenio Castellotti’s death in testing at Modena Autodrome. As related by eyewitness Peter Collins, Enzo expressed the bare minimum of regret before enquiring, “E la macchina?” [“And the car?”] Such was the place of the driver in the pecking order.

Times have indubitably moved on, for among the dignitaries arriving to welcome Hamilton were Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna and president John Elkann, scion of the Agnelli industrial dynasty which still maintains a major shareholding. It was quite literally a flying visit for Elkann, freshly arrived from a trip to Washington to kiss Donald Trump’s ring – which might account for him wearing the wrong make of trainers, requiring the photos of him with Hamilton to be removed from Ferrari’s socials. Such intrigue!

Hamilton has been busy meeting new colleagues including Ferrari president Elkann

Photo by: Ferrari

With all this attention focused on Maranello, you may well wonder why Williams chose Wednesday afternoon to announce Oliver Turvey as its development driver. In PR exposure terms this was akin to dropping a rose petal into the Grand Canyon and hanging around on the lip of the crevice in expectation of hearing a thud as the spent foliage touched the bottom.

Perhaps, therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised that Lewis Hamilton remains F1’s only true megastar, his market value still holding Max Verstappen’s in eclipse even if his greatest victories are behind him. Nobody else seems to be able to work the alchemy and smoke-and-mirrors of image management – and those who try seem to make very heavy weather of it.

Every official image of Hamilton released this week has been carefully planned and selected – and, perhaps above all, timed – to secure maximum impact. The stage managing has been exquisite: a steady drip of iconic visuals, from his pose outside Enzo’s house to the ‘reveal’ of his new all-yellow helmet livery, rather than an incontinent image dump. Each new revelation has left the audience desperately wanting more.

It's been a funny old week for men of a certain age wanting to be popular. The aforementioned POTUS spasming on stage behind the Village People, while jerking his arms around as if he’s accidentally extracted a metre of dental floss from the roll and is determined to use it anyway. Elon Musk paying other people to play video games for him. Fellows, look to Lewis Hamilton to see how clever image management for the over-40s can be made to look effortless.

As to the under-40s of F1 – you’ve got no excuses.

Every new image revealed by Ferrari has left fans wanting more

Photo by: Ferrari