Formula 1’s favourite IT boy

Lewis Hamilton has used his appearance at an HPE Discover event in Madrid to step out of his little car and take an unexpected walk down memory lane, regaling the tech crowd with tales from his past life carrying out test runs on mainframes for his dad’s IT support company.

This is the first we’ve heard of the Formula 1 driver’s IT heritage, but that’ll be because we try to avoid him at all costs – an endeavour made all too disruptive to daily life since 14ft adverts featuring his half-naked body started rolling around London on the side of its buses earlier this year.

But at least if Tommy Hilfiger decides to fund another double-decker Hamilton procession ever again, we’ll know this time we’re looking at the torso of an IT grunt come good, right?

Hold on, though. Is this just another PR stunt? Pilloried for mocking his own nephew’s choice of outfit last Christmas, he reacted by parading him around Disneyland dressed as Rapunzel. What if this time Hamilton’s said something awful about computers, and is trying to make up for it with this story about a father-and-son tech team? Our verdict: don’t trust him. There’ll be a deleted Instagram post somewhere of him saying IT is “for sad acts”.