What Lewis Hamilton’s first Mercedes car looks like, sold at auction for a record $18.8 million

The sev­en-time For­mu­la 1 cham­pi­on won his first vic­to­ry with the Mer­cedes team at the Hun­gar­i­an Grand Prix in 2013.

The car of sev­en-time For­mu­la 1 cham­pi­on Lewis Hamil­ton, in which he won his first vic­to­ry with the Mer­cedes team, was sold at Sothe­by’s auc­tion for $18.8 mil­lion.

Lewis Hamilton crosses the finish line at the 2013 Hungarian Grand Prix

Bloomberg reports that this is the high­est amount ever pub­licly paid for any mod­ern F1 car to date.

This car is known under chassis number W04

The auc­tion was held at the Wynn Las Vegas dur­ing the Las Vegas Grand Prix and sold for $18.8 mil­lion — the high­est amount paid for a mod­ern car.“For­mu­la 1″

Sothe­by’s orig­i­nal­ly esti­mat­ed the cost of the car at $10–15 mil­lion.

Accord­ing to the auc­tion house, this is the only car Mer­cedes F1 of the mod­ern era, which does not belong to Mer­cedes, team prin­ci­pal and CEO Toto Wolff or the dri­ver him­self.

A Mercedes car driven by Hamilton during a race in Hungary, 2013

There is no infor­ma­tion about who owned the car at the time of the auc­tion. Also, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the auc­tion house did not dis­close who the new own­er of the car was.

Lewis Hamil­ton dri­ves for the Mer­cedes team 2013 year and won six cham­pi­onship titles with the team dur­ing this time, 82 win­ning the Grand Prix twice. The 38-year-old dri­ver holds the For­mu­la 1 record for vic­to­ries and podi­um fin­ish­es.