Lewis Hamilton was spotted taking pictures of Mercedes’ new W15 challenger at pre-season testing in Bahrain, prompting fans to joke that he was sending the images to Ferrari. The Brit is about to embark on his final season with the Silver Arrows before joining Ferrari on a multi-year contract in 2025.
Hamilton was behind the wheel of the W15 for the second day of testing in Bahrain, completing 123 laps over the course of both sessions. Once he had returned to the garage, he was caught on camera taking close-up pictures of the wheel and cockpit areas with fans on Reddit suggesting that he could be spying on his own team for Ferrari.
“Ferrari receives spy photos from a certain Hewis Lamilton,” wrote fleaflaa, while Takis12 joked: “Brilliant! They cannot accuse you of spying, if you do it in broad daylight in front of everyone.” Pinkmanblues added: “Agent Luigi Hamiltone deployed.”
Musicartandcpus was quick to suggest another conspiracy theory involving his beloved dog, Roscoe: “Everyone’s gonna make the ‘and then he took them to Ferrari’ joke. The real fact is he’s planning out his last shots of Roscoe in the car.”
A serious explanation was offered by zaviex, who said that it was nothing out of the ordinary for drivers to snap images of certain components for use in technical discussions: “He walked to the computer right after this. Just getting a reference on what he’s trying to tell engineers. Nothing unusual. He does this every year in testing.”
Of course, it would be highly unprofessional for Hamilton to share Mercedes’ secrets with Ferrari at any point, let alone a year before leaving the Silver Arrows to join their Italian rivals. Toto Wolff recently insisted that he was not worried about Hamilton’s integrity, saying that he had no concerns about the Brit sharing sensitive information with his future team.
“When it comes to 2025, we will evaluate later in the season what it means in terms of technical information, but it’s not something that bothers me at all,” explained Wolff.
“We have engineers that go to other teams and the notice periods are sometimes as short as six months. I don’t have any doubt in Lewis’ integrity in terms of sharing information. We want to make sure that this is a successful season for both drivers and for Mercedes and all of us will give our utmost to achieve that.”
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