Lewis Hamilton stunt left American police unhappy

Mercedes F1 team principal Toto Wolff has revealed that American police in New York City were left unhappy by a Lewis Hamilton stunt.

The year 2024 saw Hamilton's final season with Mercedes after 11 years with the Brackley-based outfit, and the seven-time champion spent the whole year in a drawn out goodbye, with Hamilton having announced his Ferrari move before the start of the season.

Hamilton won six of his seven world championships with Mercedes, and had helped them claim eight consecutive constructors' titles between 2014-2021.

He also helped them with building the team's social media pages, with Hamilton confirmed this year by SportsPro to be the most marketable athlete across all sports.

And it is a social media PR stunt that Wolff has now admitted got him and the team in a little trouble on the streets of New York City.

Wolff was talking about the possibility of F1 racing in New York one day in what would be a fourth US-based race on the calendar, and the Austrian told Huddle Up: "I'd love to race in New York City that would be awesome, not sure we can because last year we ran a car with Lewis Hamilton for a WhatsApp event on Fifth Avenue.

"I don't think the police were very impressed with us and so I'm not sure this is gonna happen anytime soon."

Hamilton took to the public road in his Mercedes and in front of a packed street-side crowd eager to get a glimpse of the champion he performed a series of donuts.

US takeover of F1?

The 2025 calendar has seen two races already in the US via the Miami Grand Prix and the United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas.

And next month, F1 heads to Vegas for the third edition of the Las Vegas GP, an event that is filled with glitz and glamour and celebrities galore.

The appeal of F1 to US audiences has been growing exponentially in recent years, not least since the takeover of the sport in 2017 by Liberty Media, and the subsequent Netflix documentary on the sport titled Drive to Survive.

That show is now approaching its eighth season, and since then two new American races have been added to the calendar.

A race around the streets of New York City would be fun, but surely it would need to be at the expense of one of the other US-based races to avoid having four grands prix in the same country?

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