Alonso’s Bugatti Veyron vs Hamilton’s Ferrari F40: A Duel of Supercars

Fernando Alonso will never catch Lewis Hamilton’s haul of world titles. Away from the stopwatch, though, he’s still intent on keeping pace – and occasionally stealing the spotlight.

Hamilton and Alonso now live at opposite ends of the F1 grid more often than not, yet their status keeps them in the same financial stratosphere. Multi-million-pound salaries, decades at the top, and a shared weakness for extreme machinery mean their garages read like fantasy wishlists.

Hamilton made the latest move. At Monza, the seven-time champion rolled into his team’s home race with a pristine Ferrari F40, a car so coveted it can halt a paddock in full flow. This one, with barely any mileage and an engine block Hamilton says matches his No.44, is thought to sit somewhere between the “standard” £3million F40 valuation and the £6m record set at auction.

It was a statement. A rolling piece of motorsport royalty, paraded at the Temple of Speed.

Alonso’s mirror-finish monster

While Hamilton’s F40 turned every head at Monza, Alonso slipped behind the wheel of something even more outrageous on the streets of Monaco. The Aston Martin driver has been filmed and photographed cruising the principality in a Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse that is being billed as the most expensive Veyron ever built.

This is not just another hypercar for the collection. Built in 2014, the Veyron’s bodywork uses a staggering 20 tonnes of polished aluminium, worked and finished to create a mirror-like surface. Under the Mediterranean sun, it doesn’t just reflect Monaco – it almost blinds it.

The car that once shattered benchmarks back in 2005 remains a landmark in automotive excess. When the Veyron arrived, it became the fastest production car on the planet, clocking 407 km/h courtesy of its 8.0-litre W16 quad‑turbocharged engine. Numbers that still sound barely believable, even in an era obsessed with stats.

This particular example barely lived a life before Alonso. AutoNext report that the car had just 750km on the clock under its previous owner and sat on the market for 27 months before the Spaniard signed on the dotted line. Now it’s stretching its legs in a city where yachts and supercars are wallpaper.

A private duel in the showroom

Publicly, Alonso and Hamilton’s rivalry belongs to the past. Privately, their collections tell a different story.

The record public sale for a Veyron sits at around £2m. Given the uniqueness of Alonso’s mirror-finish Grand Sport Vitesse, expectations are that its value will soar beyond that figure, nudging it into the same rarefied air as Hamilton’s F40. Two former McLaren teammates, two icons of their era, now effectively trading blows with limited-run masterpieces.

For Alonso, 45 and still racing at the sharp end, the Veyron is another jewel in a garage already packed with exotica. He owns an Aston Martin Valkyrie hypercar – a road-going rocket with F1 DNA – and a one-off Pagani Zonda Roadster Diamante Verde, itself the kind of machine most collectors will only ever see in photographs.

Hamilton answers with his own stable of unicorns. Alonso responds with a mirror-finished Bugatti that looks like it was built to outshine a Ferrari at any angle.

On track, their story is largely written. Off it, in carbon fibre, aluminium and eye-watering price tags, the contest shows no sign of slowing.