Lewis Hamilton's Emotional Arsenal Moment at F1

On a grey Thursday in Montreal, with talk supposed to be about tyre compounds and upgrade packages, the Formula One paddock drifted somewhere very different: to north London, Paris, Guadalajara – and a World Cup without Italy.

At the centre of it all stood Lewis Hamilton, a Ferrari driver with an Arsenal heart, still emotionally raw from a Premier League moment he had waited most of his life to see.

Hamilton’s Arsenal tears

Arsenal’s 22-year wait ended not with a roar at the Emirates but with a result hundreds of miles away, confirmed when Manchester City were held to a 1-1 draw by Bournemouth on Tuesday. For Hamilton, it hit harder than he expected.

“I shed a tear, to be honest,” he admitted, the confession cutting through the usual pre-race platitudes.

The title took him straight back to Stevenage, to a five-year-old boy kicking a ball around the corner, the only Black kid in the area, surrounded by fans of West Ham, Tottenham and Manchester United. His allegiance, he said, wasn’t a careful childhood choice. It was delivered with a jab.

“She (his sister) gave me a little dig in the arm and said, ‘You have to support Arsenal.’ We had a laugh about that the other day,” he recalled.

Decades later, with seven world titles behind him and a Ferrari logo on his chest, that nudge from his sister still shapes his weekends. This week, it made him cry.

Gasly plants the PSG flag

Not everyone in the Montreal paddock shared Hamilton’s joy. A few garages down, Alpine’s Pierre Gasly could barely wait to plant his own colours in the ground.

“I’m glad we started talking about real stuff,” he joked, eager to steer the conversation towards Paris and a looming European showdown.

Gasly is a proud Paris St Germain fan, and with a Champions League clash against Arsenal on the horizon, he made his position crystal clear. PSG arrive as Ligue 1’s dominant force again, fresh from sealing a fifth successive title with a 2-0 win away at Lens.

He expects a spectacle.

The Frenchman called it a “fantastic game of football” in the making and left no ambiguity about where his loyalty lies. “I’ll obviously be rooting for PSG, and hopefully they can bring in a second Champions League,” he said.

Hamilton’s childhood memories, Gasly’s Parisian pride – two title-winning juggernauts, one collision course.

Perez’s World Cup detour

Further down the pitlane, the conversation moved from club loyalties to something even bigger. For Cadillac’s Sergio Perez, the football dream this year is not about a club crest. It is about a flag.

With the World Cup coming to his homeland and matches scheduled in his native Guadalajara, Perez is plotting a mid-season escape that would make most team managers wince.

“I literally have to come just for the game and then go back to Europe. We will make it happen,” he said, matter-of-fact, as if hopping continents for 90 minutes of football were no more complicated than a long-haul flight home.

For Perez, this is non-negotiable. A World Cup on home soil is a once-in-a-lifetime shot.

“It’s a World Cup at home. Anything can happen,” he added, hopeful but realistic about Mexico’s chances, clinging to the chaos that makes the tournament irresistible.

Antonelli’s divided heart

At the sharp end of the championship, Kimi Antonelli faces a very different World Cup problem. The Mercedes driver leads the standings, but when it comes to national colours this summer, his are missing from the tournament entirely.

Italy are out. Again.

“Italy is not in it, unfortunately. So we’re going to wait another four years, maybe,” he said, with the kind of resigned shrug Italian fans know too well. “It’s a disaster, but it’s okay.”

So Antonelli looks elsewhere. His eyes drift to yellow shirts and a No. 10 that still defines an era.

“I do really like Brazil, for example, the way they play the game,” he said. The romance of Brazilian football still grips him, but his softest spot belongs to one man.

“I’m also cheering for Messi, one of my favourite players when I was little, and also I got to meet him in Miami.”

The title leader without a national team, backing Brazil’s flair and Lionel Messi’s enduring genius – it is a strangely modern kind of fandom, unbound by borders, built on style and childhood awe.

On paper, this weekend is about the Canadian Grand Prix and the fight for points around the Île Notre-Dame. Yet in the garages and hospitality suites, the talk keeps slipping back to Arsenal’s catharsis, PSG’s ambition, Mexico’s hope, and Italy’s absence.

Engines will scream in Montreal. Hearts, for a few days at least, are somewhere else.