Mercedes Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton und🀅erwent astronaut flight training in Texas and will commemorate the exꦍperience with a special race suit in Qatar.

The sev♌en-time world champion will leave Mercedes at the end of the year to join Ferrari for the 2025 season.

As such, his🥀 partnership with IWC Schaffhausen will come to ꦏan end.

The watch company organised an astronaut flight training day for Hamilton in Texas, where he was able to take control of💝 a T-38 jet aircꦐraft.

Hamilton was put through his paces with extreme acceleration and deceleration, as well as manoeuvres to simulate the kind🧔 of G Forces (he reached 7.5 G) an astronaut would experience.

The programme Hamilton experienced is the same the crews of the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn go ⛄throug꧋h for commercial spaceflight.

Comparing the flight to his experience of driving an F1 car, Hamilton said: "It’s very different to F𝄹1, the blood💖 never leaves your head.

“Wꦬhen you’re turnin𝄹g the plane, you feel the blood leaving your body, your chest gets heavy and it’s hard to breathe.”

Hamilton will sport a race suit iꦛn this weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix carrying patch commemorating his spaceflig🔴ht training day.

The Briton comes into this weeken𝓡d’s penultimate round of the season off the back of a second-place finish at the Las Vegas GP behind Mercedes team-mate George Russell.

Hamilton and Russel♏l are locked in a tight battle to crack the top six in the drivers’ standings.

Russell leads thꦛis race by nine points from Hamilton with two rounds t🎉o go in 2024.

Hamilton has won two grands prix in 2024 - the British GP and Belgian GP - havin⛄g suffered winless campaigns in 2022 and 2023.