Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz was robbed of his $500,000 Richard Mille watch hours after his podium finish at the Italian GP.
Fortunately for the 29-year-old driver, he still had his racing boots on and chased the robbers on foot.
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It all happened outside the Armani Hotel in Milan.
Sainz was on his way back to the hotel after the Italian GP at Monza when three men accosted him.
The three men mugged him at knifepoint, and they made away with a Richard Mille timepiece worth half a million dollars.
Or at least they thought they did.
With the help of a passerby, Sainz chased the robbers, got his watch back and had the perpertrators arrested.
Even though the story has a happy ending, there may be a pattern here and it’s a bit worrying.
The same exact thing happened to Charles Leclerc and McLaren driver Lando Norris.
Both drivers were robbed of their watch, and both times the watch in question was a Richard Mille.
In fact, Norris has been robbed twice.
Once outside Wembley during Euro 2020 and then again this summer in Marbella.
As for Leclerc, his watch was snatched when he was on holiday with friends in the Italian town of Viareggio.
The watch resurfaced on the black market a few months later, where it sold for nearly half its price.
Speaking of his day at the track, Sainz said he was happy with the podium.
“It was a great weekend all along and to be able to celebrate a podium with the Tifosi (Italian supporters, ed.) is the perfect icing on the cake,” Sainz said.
The Italian GP was once again a one-sided affair with Red Bull Racing cannibalizing the podium with a one-two finish.
Max Verstappen won his tenth GP in a row, beating his teammate Sergio Pérez by nine seconds.
Carlos Sainz completed the podium with a third-place finish, narrowly beating his Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc.
The next Formula One race, the Singapore Grand Prix, is scheduled for September 17.
