Lewis Hamilton reacts after F1 star wakes up next to spider

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari, Silverstone, Britain, 2026 — Photo: © IMAGO

Spiders

Lewis Hamilton reacts after F1 star wakes up next to spider

Well, it IS spooky season

Chris Deeley Editor

Experienced sports writer covering F1 and other motorsports since 2023

Monday 5 October 2026 15:27

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You can be an F1 driver like Lewis Hamilton and at the very top of your game, protected from most of reality and everyday mundanities, but you know what you can never truly escape from? Spiders.

While the oft-quoted line about never being more than 10 feet from a spider came from an arachnologist coming up with the figure off-hand in an interview (and he said 'a few yards', and 'probably'), it's true that...well, there are lots of spiders. You can quote us on that.

Ollie Bearman came close to being F1's own Spiders Georg on Thursday night in Malaysia, when he got woken up by a creepy crawly who probably wanted nothing more than for him to share one of the mountain of pillows he was selfishly hogging (we assume).

If Ollie Bearman got bitten by a radioactive Malaysian spider, would he become Ollie Spiderman?

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Bearman reveals night-time hotel room visitor

The young Brit was teased about the incident by his soon to be former team-mate Esteban Ocon at a Haas and Ferrari fan event later in the race weekend, who asked him 'how were the spiders, did you enjoy the spiders?'

Bearman went on to explain to the crowd: "I had a spider in my hotel on Thursday night in my bed, I had to move hotels. I got woken up at 2am with a spider next to my head. I texted my travel team like 'guys, I’m moving, I’m not staying here'.

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"I heard him kind of walking up to me, I opened my eyes and he was right there. I had to go back to sleep, because I couldn't find him. I was like, 'can you put me on a high floor?'"

Little did Bearman know, GPFans have done some investigative work and the spider in question is (we swear) a racing driver in its own right in the up and coming F8 series – and has its own travel team, who immediately got to work putting him in Bearman's new room. You can run, Bear Boy, but you can't hide.

Lewis Hamilton, sharing the stage with the youngster, has clearly studied this issue in the past – telling him 'I would've been sleeping in the car'. It's a little-known local law that spiders in the Sepang area are legally not allowed to enter cars unless invited and, as a generally law-abiding species, that law is generally very well respected.

If you want to avoid spiders in Sepang, stay in your car at all times. It's that simple.