Lewis Hamilton hinted at the Abu Dhabi GP ‘Hammer Time’ call being the final ever as he does not want to hear it from someone else at Ferrari.

‘Hammer Time’ is a phrase that became synonymous with the seven-time World Champion at Mercedes, a not-so-discreet codename from Hamilton‘s long-serving race engineer Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington for maximum attack needed in a race situation.

‘Hammer Time’ over with Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes career?

And Bono reached for the greatest hits by breaking the phrase out at the 2024 Abu Dhabi GP, Hamilton’s final Mercedes race, telling him: “Okay Lewis, we’ll go strat mode five and it’s Hammer Time!

“We’ve got a plan here showing possible P3.”

Hamilton ultimately was forced to settle for P4, but that nonetheless marked a stellar recovery drive from P16 on the grid, ensuring that for Hamilton, his record-breaking Mercedes career ended on a high as he now prepares to embark on a new F1 career chapter with Ferrari.

However, it would appear that this iconic phrase will not follow Hamilton to Maranello.

“I don’t know if we’re going to have Hammer Time ever again,” he said as he addressed the F1 fans.

“I’ll have to get Bono to give me a call or something…

“I can’t let anybody else say Hammer Time to me.”

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Speaking with Channel 4, Hamilton reflected on the “really cool” experience of having Bono tell him it’s Hammer Time – a nod to the iconic MC Hammer hit ‘U Can’t Touch This’ – one final time.

Asked if he enjoyed his final Mercedes race, Hamilton replied: “Yeah, I definitely did. I didn’t enjoy the first part of the race, when everyone started on the medium [tyres] and I was on the hard.

“I was like, ‘Shoot, have we got it right?’ And I just didn’t have pace. I struggled with a lot of understeer. So it wasn’t going particularly well. And for a moment, I was like, ‘Oh, shoot. Is it going to be a race a bit like Qatar’, because that really sucked.

“But I just kept my head down. It was like, ‘It’s going to get better. It’s going to get better’. And then the people were pitting, and obviously I saw on the board that I had moved up. And then, obviously, we then switched the tyres and I was like, ‘Everything, everything. Hammer Time’.

“It was really cool to have Bono say that, because I haven’t heard him say it for a while.”

And Hamilton explained how the ‘Hammer Time’ phrase can be traced all the way back to his first season with Mercedes for its origin.

“So, I remember telling him back in 2013, he’d be like, ‘Time to push this’. I was just like, next time, tell me it’s ‘Hammer Time’,” Hamilton recalled. “And then he’s just never stopped.”

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