At the end-of-season Prize Giving ceremony in Baku on Friday, Lewis Hamilton accepted his third-place trophy from the FIA; however, the prize has inexplicably found its way into the hands of a fan.
It turns out that after all of the on-track action concluded, the most bizarre Formula 1 story of the 2023 season emerged.
We’ve been here before, with Lewis Hamilton and the FIA, but this time it’s not about anything that transpired during a race. It concerns an incident that occurred on a Friday night in Baku, Azerbaijan, and resulted in the loss of the Mercedes driver’s season-long prize.
Sort of, anyway – the person who seems to have it has been making no secret of that fact. A social media user, using the name Nihad Nesirli on their account, has been posting photos of the trophy.
They claim it was given to them by Hamilton. The Brit flew to Baku to attend the FIA end-of-season Prize Giving ceremony to pick it up, deliver a short speech on stage and then head off to get started on his plans for the winter break.
He did not leave with the trophy in his possession, nor was that the plan. As Mercedes said in a media alert on Sunday morning, Hamilton left the trophy behind on purpose – but not, as some outlets had reported, as a form of protest against the FIA.
The team statement read: “Immediately after leaving the stage, and as has been done at previous prize-givings, Lewis accepted the offer from officials for the trophy to be sent on to the team and therefore left it in their care. We can confirm he did not give the trophy to anyone ‘as a gift’, as has been speculated.”
Naturally, some fans got in touch with Nihad Nesirli after reading that statement. It prompted the social media user to post again on his account to address the issue, this time attributing it to a misunderstanding between himself and the F1 racer.
They wrote: “Hello, good evening. I am very disappointed to see messages written to me like thief or something. First of all I want to say I didn’t steal anything from anywhere. This is just a misunderstanding. Lewis Hamilton put the award on the table. I asked him if I could take the prize.
He said to me, yes, you can take the prize. And I thought he gifted me the award. But now, after seeing the statement from Mercedes, I understand that Lewis did not gift me the award. He mistakenly thought I was the FIA official in charge of the award.”
This explanation, however, does not fit with what Mirror Sport has learned about what transpired following Hamilton’s trophy collection. According to sources, the seven-time world champion did not interact with any fans before leaving the venue and gave the prize to an FIA official who was most definitely not Nihad Nesirli, as stated in the Mercedes statement.
How it came to be in the possession of Nihad Nesirli remains unknown. Mirror Sport has approached them for comment. But their claim that Hamilton gave the trophy to them or allowed them to take it has been disputed by multiple sources familiar with the events of that night.