MotoGP | Piero Ferrari had told Quartararo about Hamilton's signing

Fabio Quartararo is a great Formula 1 fan and, whenever he can, goes to see some grand prix. In recent years he has made friends with Daniel Ricciardo, while Monster, one of Yamaha's and also Mercedes' sponsors, has brought the Frenchman and Lewis Hamilton together on several occasions.

“El Diablo” is a lover of sports cars, it is not strange that he travels from his home in Andorra to Barcelona to visit an acquaintance who runs a McLaren dealership in the city and try out some models.

In the penultimate week of January, before traveling to Sepang to face the first tests of the 2024 pre-season, the driver from Nice visited the Ferrari headquarters in Maranello. There, Piero Ferrari, son of Enzo, founder of the most important car brand in the world, acted as his guide.

At a certain moment of the day, the manager and shareholder of the Prancing Horse gave him an indiscretion which at that moment did not allow him to decipher one of the operations which on paper is the most incredible in the history of the Formula 1 World Championship.

With the 2021 MotoGP world champion already in Malaysia, Scuderia Maranello has confirmed Hamilton's arrival in 2025 as Carlos Sainz's replacement and Charles Leclerc's teammate.

“It was strange, because I had gone to visit Maranello a couple of days before the announcement and Piero Ferrari had mentioned it to me, but at that moment I hadn't been able to interpret it, I hadn't understood it. I didn't pay attention to it until it was official,” said Quartararo in a chat we had a few days ago with Motorsport.com, before getting back on the Yamaha for the final pre-season tests in Qatar.

Quartararo was born in 1999, eight years before Hamilton's debut in Formula 1, with McLaren. When the Stevenage driver signed with Mercedes in 2013, the Frenchman was eight years old. For him, seeing one of his landmarks dressed in red will be impactful, as he always identifies him with the Silver Arrows tracksuit: “I always remember Lewis in Mercedes. I don't even have any memories of his time at McLaren. It will be strange to see him dressed in red.”