This McLaren MP4-21 was Lewis Hamilton’s first F1 test car, and it could be yours

Most would commemorate Lewis Hamilton’s recent British GP win - his 104th in Formula One - with an extra pint or a thought-out Instagram post. But what if you had a few million quid burning a hole in your pocket? Well, purchasing his first-ever test car at McLaren, the MP4-21, wouldn’t be a half-bad shout.

That very same Adrian Newey-designed car is up for sale now via RM Sotheby’s with a pre-auction guide price of between £2.2 and £2.7 million. In exchange, you get a pretty sizable slice of motorsport history, a mildly cool livery and a naturally aspirated 2.4-litre V8 that produces 760bhp at a redline of nineteen thousand. Hopefully, a pair of ear muffs are thrown in.

That screaming power is then controlled through a seven-speed sequential transmission and sent to a set of totally road-legal Michelin tyres. Oh, the entire unit tips the scale at just 605kg too, so it’s a *fairly* solid option for a private track day hoon for the winning bidder.

Some further backstory on chassis number ‘21A-03’: it was driven by Pablo Montoya for the first three races of the 2006 season, finishing fifth and fourth before curtains were drawn on the third race of the season. Suppose you could say it’s… barely been run in, then?

Anyway, it’s not often that a Formula One car comes up for auction - let alone one with as much significance as this one. So perhaps the two-something-million-quid it’d take to win the auction *might* be justifiable.