Lewis Hamilton’s well-documented love affair with the Ferrari F40 has gone up several notches now that he’s the extremely besotted owner of a barn-find example of what many regard as the Prancing Horse’s finest supercar.

The seven-time F1 world champion broke the news on Instagram yesterday, revealing the team at Maranello completely restored the F40 twin-turbo V8 classic, which is one of just 1311 examples produced from 1987 to 1996.

Man in a blue jumpsuit kneeling beside a red sports car in a garage or workshop environment.
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“My very own F40. This is the car of my dreams and has been for as long as I can remember. As a kid I dreamt of having one. When I joined Ferrari last year I made sure to have one with me on my first day at Maranello. That’s how much it means to me,” Hamilton wrote on his post, which has been liked almost two million times.

Rather than purchase an F40 that a collector had already kept in top nick, Hamilton chose one that had been, in his words, “sat in a garage for thirty years”. His decision might have been influenced by the fact he could turn it over to the geniuses at Ferrari to have fresh life breathed into it.

“I knew I had to bring her home. First to Maranello, where the master engineers and mechanics at the factory worked for weeks to bring her back to life,” Hamilton said, before promising to share more of his new pride and joy with his fans.

The photos on the Instagram post show the Briton watching as the F40 is worked on by the crew at Ferrari Classiche, the department at Maranello that opened in July 2006 and restores and authenticates older cars. His red example is covered in dust in many of the images, with one showing one of the engine parts stamped with the number 44.

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Hamilton sold his multi-million-dollar car collection in September last year, with the news breaking just before the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. “I don’t have any cars anymore. I got rid of all my cars. I’m more into art nowadays,” he explained, before adding, “If I was going to get a car, it would be the Ferrari F40. But that’s a nice piece of art.”

The last model to be personally signed off by Enzo Ferrari himself, the F40 was very light on tech compared to the groundbreaking Porsche 959 that arrived just before it. That is one of the keys to its enduring status as an all-time great, however, along with its timeless looks and performance.