The 2022 NFL season is well underway. The season kicked off on September 8 with last year’s winners, L.A. Rams locking horns against Buffalo Bills. While the season has just started, they have already confirmed Rihanna to be headlining the Super Bowl halftime show, which will take place on February 12, 2023.

Rihanna recently confirmed the news with a photo of her holding a football on Twitter. But what has caught Formula One fans’ eye is Mercedes F1 posting on Twitter a very similar photo of Lewis Hamilton, aka XNDA, holding his racing helmet.

The post got fans wondering if XNDA is back and will be performing alongside the legendary pop star, Rihanna. For the fans who did not know, XNDA is the pseudonym Lewis Hamilton is known in the music world as. In 2018, Christina Aguilera released a song with a verse sung by XNDA.

Coming back to the Super Bowl halftime performance link, fans can’t keep calm after Mercedes’ Twitter post. In all fairness, their intention behind posting the photo could have well been to mark the return of Formula One after a 3-week hiatus. But we can’t blame fans for getting excited, right?

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This is what ‘Umbrella’ girl Rihanna posted on her Twitter:

And this is how fans reacted to Mercedes’ post:

One fan thought Mercedes did it better than Rihanna.

Another fan thought that Lewis was just missing his friend Rihanna.

Rumor mills went abuzz when Lewis and Rihanna were often spotted hanging out. However, Lewis put these rumors to rest when he stated that they were just friends. “You know, I’ve known Ri for a long time,” he told E! “We’ve been friends for a while. We get to hang out every now and again…”

Lewis Hamilton’s musical alter ego: XNDA

Fans were quick to recognize Lewis’ voice in Christina Aguilera’s 2018 song called “Pipe”. However, Lewis revealed that XNDA was no one else but him in 2020.

But what took him so long to own up to his second identity? Apparently, the now 7-time world champion, at that time, dealt with “Insecurities, fear, overthinking” regarding how fans would react to it. In 2020, he even thanked Christina for inviting him to sing in her song.

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We have officially heard XNDA once. Going by how little his part in the 2018 song was, fans have been waiting ever since. We, as fans, would surely love to hear more of him. So could Super Bowl turn out to be a grand event to announce an album or maybe just perform alongside an old friend?