Lewis Hamilton has been spotted behind the wheel of a very different kind of Ferrari at Fiorano – not the SF-26 he races on Sundays, but what looks to be the team’s famous F1 3-Seater, the one-off machine built to haul VIPs around a racing circuit at genuinely terrifying speed.
Images and video circulating online show Hamilton in the central driving seat, with two passengers flanking him in the rear, at Ferrari’s private test facility in Maranello. The car is wearing current 2026 season livery: Rosso Corsa with up-to-date sponsor decals and including prominent ZYN branding on the white cockpit surround, the nicotine pouch brand owned by Philip Morris International that first appeared on Ferrari’s race cars at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in late 2025.
The car is a Formula 1 machine designed by Rory Byrne in 2003, built on the foundation of the championship-winning F2002 chassis and subsequently revised and updated in 2013.
It has never been a show car in the traditional sense.
Powered by a 3000cc ten-cylinder engine producing over 800 hp and paired with a seven-speed gearbox, it exists specifically to let Ferrari drivers give a select few the experience of lapping a circuit in a Formula 1 car.
It is used regularly for high-profile sponsor engagements and VIP experiences – which is exactly what this Fiorano appearance appears to be.
What makes the car genuinely special in 2026 is its engine. That naturally aspirated V10 doesn’t just make power, it makes noise, the kind of flat-out, high-pitched scream that defined early-2000s F1 and has essentially vanished from modern racing. Drop Hamilton into a current SF-26 with its tightly regulated hybrid power unit and the soundtrack is a different proposition entirely. The 3-Seater is, in its own way, a working museum piece.
There’s something quietly fitting about Hamilton being the one in the driver’s seat for this.
He broke a draught at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix as he achieved his first grand prix win with the Scuderia, and the season is expected to build from there.
Running sponsor events between race weekends is standard practice at Ferrari – the 3-Seater has been part of that program for years – but seeing Hamilton embedded into the brand so deeply in this way could be a special moment for his fans.
The car running current sponsor livery while still housing a screaming V10 under the bodywork is a neat encapsulation of what Ferrari does well: sell the heritage and the spectacle at the same time. Whoever was sitting in those flanking seats had a very good day.
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| Lewis Hamilton on track in Fiorano today!! Presumably, filming something for ZYN. pic.twitter.com/RxxvxB2m2K
