After a woeful 2022 campaign, where Lewis Hamilton failed to win a single race and finished sixth in the Drivers’ Championship, things appear to have gotten no better since the winter break began.
Hamilton has endured a season that he’ll never want to replicate, after extending his winless streak to 23 races in what was statistically his worst season in the sport by some margin.
Prior to 2022, the 37-year-old had claimed a victory in every season he’d competed in, something he failed to continue this year.
In all honesty, it hasn’t been his fault, with Mercedes boss Toto Wolff having openly admitted that the Brackley-based team didn’t give the 103-time GP winner a “good enough” car.
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The W13 has already been revealed as heading to the receptions at the team’s bases in Brixworth and Brackley, as a daily reminder of how gruelling and challenging the championship can be.
Hamilton’s last venture in the W13 was in the post-season test at the Yas Marina Circuit, two days on from retiring from the season finale.
Perhaps in a bid to forget about the year as quickly as possible, Hamilton has been seen pushing a beautiful Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R to its limits in Japan.
The Stevenage-born driver posted a very well edited video onto social media captioned with “I only like to drive on track, but I make exceptions”.
The video sees Hamilton doing donuts in an abandoned car park which comically resulted in smoke flying up the transmission tunnel and filling the inside of the car, much to Hamilton’s amusement.
The video of him speeding and doing donuts surpassed 1.5 million likes in no time at all, with many asking for more content like it.
However, there does seem to be one huge problem with what Hamilton’s done, after it was discovered that the Skyline was a rented vehicle.
According to Noriyaro, an influencer who lives in Japan, the car that Hamilton drove was actually from Omoshiro Rent-a-Car, who are reportedly unhappy with the Mercedes driver.
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The rental company, unsurprisingly, didn’t give Hamilton permission to drive the car in the manner in which he did, and have since reshared the driver’s video with their own comment.
“We prohibit this type of driving. This is a horrible act done without our permission,” the rental company wrote after sharing Hamilton’s video on Instagram.
Hamilton is yet to respond to the claims that it was a rental car and that he didn’t have permission to drive it the way it did, despite how cool it came across!