Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc put on a show for Ferrari fans

MILAN – Lewis Hamilton felt the force of the Ferrari fans as he and teammate Charles Leclerc sped around Milan’s Piazza Castello on March 6, before heading to Australia for the start of the Formula One season next week.

Some 35,000 “tifosi” thronged the event, presented by Ferrari sponsor Unicredit, as seven-time world champion Hamilton performed smoking tyre burnouts after filling the city streets with noise.

The Briton drove a 2021 SF21 car while Leclerc was at the wheel of an SF90, the car in which he won his first race for the team in 2019, with both running at the same time and passing each other.

“I’ve seen the tifosi over the years for Sebastian (Vettel),I’ve seen them for Fernando (Alonso),I’ve seen them for Charles and Carlos (Sainz),so I wasn’t surprised,” said Hamilton of the crowd’s excitement.

“Bit by bit I’m getting to see more and more of the tifosi and getting to know them a little bit more. I really, really want to be able to communicate with them in Italian, so I’ve got to work on it.”

The most successful team in Formula One have not won a championship since the 2008 constructors’ title and Hamilton, moving from Mercedes to Maranello, arrives chasing a record eighth.

The 40-year-old was left in no doubt what that would mean for the fans and Italy as a whole.

“Just driving for Ferrari is a huge honour but they already have an incredible legacy so it’s not that they need necessarily another championship, because they have so many already,” he said.

“But I know that’s what they exist to do, to work towards, and I know that the tifosi are dying for that... I wouldn’t be able to find the words to be able to express just how