Lewis Hamilton may drive one of the fastest cars in the world for a living, but his terrifying near-death experience didn’t occur on a race track.
The seven-time Formula 1 world champion revealed the scary incident took place in Hawaii while surfing the infamous Pipeline with Kelly Slater.
“They were 20-foot waves and Kelly said, ‘There’s no way you can get out there,’” Hamilton said during an interview. interview on Hot Ones, which dropped on Thursday.
“When I tried to paddle in, I got sucked into the kill zone,” he continued.
‘I turn around and see a series of four waves coming. [I thought] “It’s over, it’s all over.”
Lewis Hamilton recalled a near-death experience during a new Hot Ones interview
He said the incident occurred while he was trying to surf in Hawaii
The Mercedes driver, who counts the 11-time World Surfing League champion as a friend, said he jumped off his board and dived underwater to hold onto the reef.
“I could hear this wave crashing above me,” he recalled.
‘My plate was torn off and broke in half. I came up gasping for air, but the next one was coming, so I went back down.”
Hamilton, who ate an ultra-spicy wing as he told the gripping story, said he dived underwater three more times.
Hamilton, who was surfing with Kelly Slater, thought “it was all over” as the wave approached
‘My plate broke in half. “I came up gasping for air, but the next one was coming,” he said
The seven-time F1 champion finally reached shore after the series of ‘6 meter high’ waves
“I almost ran out of air, I almost drowned,” he said.
Fortunately, he “managed to swim back to shore from there.”
In 2019, the British athlete joined Slater at his state-of-the-art Surf Ranch, in California’s central San Joaquin Valley.
The facility, which is powered by renewable energy, is credited with creating the world’s largest open-barrel artificial wave.
‘New year, new sport, time to learn new things. Thanks #goat Kelly Slater for teaching me! That was amazing,” Hamilton wrote in a post at the time.