Sir Lewis Hamilton is used to whizzing around in souped-up cars, but at home he likes to keep himself unobtrusive in a Mr Bean-esque stunner.
The Formula 1 asset is not a fan of driving outside office hours and prefers to go for a spin in a back-to-basics Mini Cooper if he has to.
Sir Lewis, 37, told The Jimmy Kimmel Show: ‘I don’t really like driving unless I’m going fast.
“When I get home, I’ll have an old Mini Cooper, like the Mr Bean car. I’m taking it back to the city where I grew up and driving through my memory.’
Sir Lewis, who grew up in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, continues: ‘I am going beyond my first school, my first home. No one would expect me in that car, that’s for sure!’
“The only time I drive is when I go back and visit my parents. I don’t like traffic – it’s more stressful for me.
And with several properties around the world, including Monaco, he sometimes forgets the traffic rules.
“I don’t know which side to drive,” he admitted. “I go out on the road and I’m always on the wrong side.”
The seven-time F1 world champion reminisced about taking his knighthood last year from King – then Prince – Charles, after meeting when he was a teenager.
He said: ‘I went to’ McLaren when I was 13 years old… and he came to open the factory. I was in my go-kart… he knelt down and asked me what I wanted to do, what my dreams were. I said to him: “One day I want to be Formula 1 world champion,” he recalls.
“If you get all the way down the line at the palace, you have to take all these steps to get to the prince – it’s very formal… I was very nervous, you have a feeling that the sword could be very sharp, or something.
“But when I got up again, he said, ‘You’ve come a very long way…I remember talking to you.'”
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