It’s the top of an period — and the most important driver transfer in Components One historical past.
After 12 seasons, six world championships and 82 race wins, Lewis Hamilton is leaving Mercedes for Ferrari.
It’s a day most thought would by no means come. Hamilton himself mentioned final 12 months he anticipated to stay with Mercedes “til my final days”, and there was “no place I might somewhat be.”
However the attraction of a shock transfer to Ferrari, introduced for 2025 on Thursday, proved too sturdy for the seven-time champion looking for a record-breaking eighth world title.
It’s the type of transfer F1 followers — and the figures on the prime of the game itself — may have solely dreamed of ever occurring. Partnering Hamilton, F1’s most well-known and profitable driver, with Ferrari, F1’s most well-known and profitable crew, is field workplace stuff.
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Ferrari will probably enter the 2025 season with the strongest lineup in F1 as Hamilton races alongside Charles Leclerc, its younger star. As ‘superteam’ lineups go, wanting the implausible prospect of Hamilton teaming up with Max Verstappen, it’s exhausting to consider any larger.
Whatever the end result, this will probably be one of many defining tales in F1 for the subsequent couple of years because the 39-year-old Hamilton bids to jot down the most recent — and probably last — chapter of his glittering F1 profession in Ferrari’s well-known pink vehicles.
However why stop Mercedes on the eve of the brand new season, for a crew that hasn’t gained a championship in 15 years?
Since successful his first drivers’ championship with Mercedes (the second of his profession), Hamilton has been inextricably linked with the Silver Arrows. (Darren Heath/Getty Photographs)
A lack of religion in Mercedes?
Hamilton and Mercedes fashioned one of many best groups the game has ever seen.
Six of Hamilton’s seven world titles arrived between 2014 and 2020, his solely defeat in that stretch coming to teammate Nico Rosberg in 2016. Collectively Hamilton and Mercedes dominated F1, seeing off the specter of Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel, as soon as vaunted as the mixture that would put an finish to years of silver success by 2017-20.
Hamilton got here inside one right determination by race management on the 2021 finale in Abu Dhabi from breaking Michael Schumacher’s file and successful an eighth world title, just for Verstappen to go him on the ultimate lap restart and deny him the crown.
The controversy put Hamilton on a redemption arc. Fuelled by that heartache, 2022 grew to become the season he was as a consequence of reclaim what ought to’ve been his — just for Mercedes to construct a automobile that merely wasn’t as much as the job. Hamilton knew from the second he first drove the W13 it wasn’t adequate to win a title. It wasn’t even adequate to win a race, resigning him to the primary season of his F1 profession and not using a single victory.
The struggles continued by final 12 months. Hamilton was usually annoyed by the restrictions of his automobile, leaving him to endure one other winless season as Verstappen and Pink Bull dominated proceedings. After the final race of the 12 months in Abu Dhabi, Hamilton summed up his temper as “not nice” and forged doubt on anybody catching Pink Bull in 2024: “You may just about guess the place they’re going to be subsequent 12 months.”
Hamilton’s fortunes have dipped since successful his seventh drivers’ championship got here in 2020. (Salih Zeki Fazlioglu/Anadolu Company through Getty Photographs)
Mercedes had already set about overhauling its automobile for 2024, having ditched its radical ‘zeropod’ idea halfway by final 12 months. Expectations have been being managed, however there was higher confidence from the crew that the automobile popping out of Brackley this 12 months wouldn’t carry the identical “spiteful” traits, to cite technical director James Allison, and that it could give Hamilton a greater probability of success.
Hamilton gained’t get an prolonged run within the Mercedes automobile till preseason testing begins in Bahrain later this month. A primary style will are available a shakedown at Silverstone when the automobile is launched on Feb. 14, and Hamilton could have pushed a mannequin within the simulator which can provide a sign of what to anticipate. However there gained’t be a real understanding of the W15 automobile’s potential till he drives it for actual.
The choice to leap ship now suggests doubt in Mercedes’ skill to alter course and get again to the summit from which it as soon as seemed down on the F1 competitors. Had been Hamilton absolutely assured Mercedes was the place to be to win the eighth title he craves, he wouldn’t contemplate going elsewhere, significantly given the emotional ties he has with the crew.
It’ll give Hamilton and Mercedes a ‘lengthy goodbye’ by 2024, one last 12 months collectively to try to succeed. However there may also be the awkwardness of the crew planning for the post-Hamilton period with out his involvement, progressively phasing him out of top-level conferences.
What Ferrari can supply
That is the massive query mark over the transfer. Mercedes has proven few indicators of having the ability to severely problem for a championship up to now two years — but neither has Ferrari.
The crew began the brand new set of F1 laws strongly in 2022, going toe-to-toe with Pink Bull earlier than regressing over the race distances. Whereas it was the one crew apart from Pink Bull to win a race final 12 months, courtesy of Carlos Sainz in Singapore, Ferrari’s most important battle lay with Mercedes. It in the end misplaced the race for second within the championship by three factors.
Like Mercedes, Ferrari has promised an overhaul of its automobile for this 12 months, which is able to characteristic 95 % new elements. It’ll lay the foundations for Hamilton’s first Ferrari F1 automobile in 2025, the final below the present rule set earlier than the design guidelines change considerably once more for 2026. That’s the 12 months most regard to supply one of the best probability of ending Verstappen and Pink Bull’s dominance.
Hamilton raced for now-Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur’s ART Grand Prix crew in his early days, and so they have remained in shut contact ever since.(Components 1/Components Motorsport Restricted through Getty Photographs)
Hamilton’s age additionally must be thought-about. He’ll be 40 by the point he joins Ferrari, and though he stays in peak bodily situation and has expressed zero doubts over his long-term future, he’s not within the place to spend money on a long-term undertaking like a lot of his youthful counterparts.
It means there must be fast success as soon as Hamilton joins in 2025, however his pending arrival will solely assist construct momentum at Maranello. The crew is on a recruitment drive, and the lure of working with Hamilton can solely assist it appeal to prime technical expertise who may assist its bid to win one other championship.
On a pure aggressive degree, going from Mercedes to Ferrari seems like a sideways transfer. However there’s one factor Ferrari supplied Hamilton that Mercedes — and, frankly, no different crew — can’t.
The romance behind the transfer
Ferrari has all the time loved a legendary air in F1. It’s ingrained within the sport’s historical past. You consider F1, and also you consider Ferrari.
No crew carries such status and prowess. Even within the fallow intervals and not using a championship, like the present one stretching again to 2008, it has remained a crew the vast majority of drivers dream of racing for someday. Toto Wolff, Mercedes’ crew principal, even acknowledged in 2019 that “most likely it’s in each driver’s head to drive at Ferrari someday.”
Or, as Vettel as soon as put it: “Everyone seems to be a Ferrari fan. Even when they are saying they’re not, they’re Ferrari followers.”
There’s a diploma of romance behind the transfer. Hamilton has owned Ferrari highway vehicles, and has a detailed friendship with John Elkann, Ferrari’s president. It’ll additionally see Hamilton reunite with Fred Vasseur, Ferrari’s crew principal. Hamilton raced for Vasseur’s ART Grand Prix crew when he was on the ranks resulting in F1, and so they have remained in shut contact ever since.
Hamilton has all the time held nice respect for the historical past of F1. He’s obsessed with its roots and its historical past, which means the burden of Ferrari won’t be misplaced on him. It’s a crew that so a lot of F1’s best names have pushed for at one stage of their careers.
To succeed with Ferrari is, in some ways, the last word story in F1 — and may very well be big for Hamilton’s personal legacy. For his last hurrah in F1 to be with Ferrari, probably successful the record-breaking eighth world championship, would absolutely be the last word option to finish his storied profession.
The choice? Ferrari fails to ship a automobile adequate for Hamilton to return to the highest. The strategic miscues and errors that occurred all too usually lately are a supply of frustration. There is no such thing as a eighth world championship.
Even in that situation, Hamilton nonetheless will get to satisfy the dream so many F1 drivers maintain, and only a few really understand, of racing for Ferrari. Seeing him in these well-known pink overalls will take some getting used to, but it surely’s now going to develop into a actuality.
It’s price remembering when Hamilton left McLaren for Mercedes in 2013, when it had only a single race win to its identify since returning to F1, the choice was broadly doubted. It proved to be a masterstroke. He’ll hope his judgment has confirmed right as soon as once more.
(Lead picture of Lewis Hamilton: Dan Istitene, Bryn Lennon / Getty Photographs; Design: John Bradford/The Athletic)
