You can now drive Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes F1 car in Gran Turismo Sport

No word yet on whether you get an in-game 'Bonno' race engineer too


LEWIS Hamilton fans on Gran Turismo Sport now have extra reason to pick up their PlayStation controllers: his 2017 Formula One car is now available in the PS4 racing game.

The headline addition of a new update for the game, the Mercedes AMG F1 W08 EQ Power+ is the car in which the Brit became a four-time Formula One world champion — winning nine races on his way to securing last year’s title.

Unsurprisingly, Hamilton’s Mercedes W08 is classified as one of the fastest cars around a track in the entire game, with its “Group X” rating putting the hybrid F1 car in a category dominated by experimental fictional racing vehicles such as the Red Bull X2014 and a whole suite of outrageous Vision Gran Turismo concept cars.

As the number 44 Mercedes is currently the only Formula One car in GT Sport, it’s impossible for players to race their new Silver Arrow against comparable competitors. There is, though, a new single player career mode championship that’s exclusively eligible for the W08, and the PS4-exclusive release’s livery editor tool means there’s a good chance the car will be used by gamers as a canvas on which to showcase liveries from other F1 teams.

There’s more to the GT Sport update than Hamilton’s 2017 Mercedes: six additional cars (including the legendary Mazda 787B Le Mans racer, classic Ferrari 250 GTO and a trio of extremely cool Japanese kei cars) and the fictional “Circuit de Sainte-Croix” street track have also been added to the game.

Gran Turismo Sport game review

Me and My Motor: Lewis Hamilton, reigning Formula 1 world champion