At the end of the 2024 season, Lewis Hamilton will leave Mercedes. It emerged at the beginning of February that he’ll join Ferrari for 2025.
This surely ranks as the biggest driver transfer in F1’s history. Indeed, Hamilton brings to an end the most successful partnership the sport has ever seen to join its most iconic team.
When he joined the Silver Arrows in 2013, he’d won one world championship. His stint at McLaren peaked with his 2008 triumph but aside from that it was a story of what might have been.
But between 2014 and 2020, he’d win six out of seven world championships. No driver had ever won more than five in the same colours.
While he’s still hunting for an unprecedented eighth title, he’s out on his own in other categories. He leads the way all-time for race victories (103) and pole positions (104).
But his Mercedes tenure isn’t ending the way that he would have hoped. The 39-year-old has made his poorest-ever start to a season as his team have slid from the heels of Red Bull to the front of the midfield.
There’s now serious doubt as to whether he can sign off with a final victory for the team, three years on from his last win at the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Team principal Toto Wolff insists he remains in surprisingly good spirits.
Behind the scenes, Wolff feels somewhat betrayed by Hamilton’s exit. And the Englishman has grown ‘tired’ of waiting for a breakthrough.
The Mercedes boss has previously admitted that the timing of the move was what surprised him most. But with each race, Hamilton appears increasingly prescient.
Lewis Hamilton on the moment where he had to be ‘very careful’ at Mercedes
Speaking to French outlet Nextgen-Auto, Hamilton reflected on one of his greatest performances at the 2018 Singapore Grand Prix. The Briton would clinch the title that year with two races to spare but Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari had threatened to interrupt his dominance.
On what was a crucial weekend at Marina Bay, Mercedes appeared to be struggling. Both Ferrari and Red Bull seemed to have an edge.
But in Q3, Hamilton produced what is widely seen as an all-time great lap to beat Max Verstappen to pole position by more than three tenths. He then went on to win the race by just under nine seconds, with Vettel third.
Hamilton recalls that he angered senior Mercedes figures, including the late Niki Lauda, by attending a fashion event in New York in the week leading up to the race. But he emphatically silenced their doubts.
He said: “It’s not really good preparation for a race weekend. So you have to be very careful about that. The story that people gave me was, ‘Oh, he’s not focused.’ But I wasn’t out partying late or drinking like That.”
“I arrived in Singapore and did one of the best laps I’ve ever done. And after that, everyone was like, ‘Oh, he can do that.’ Even Niki was telling Toto: ‘You can’t let Lewis do that! That’s not what a racing driver does!’ I proved them wrong.”
Lewis Hamilton prepares to make Ferrari move
Hamilton is now looking to complete his career by ending Ferrari’s championship drought, which stretches all the way back to 2007. To do that, he’ll have to beat Charles Leclerc, and opinions vary on the challenge he faces.
Mika Hakkinen has backed Leclerc, a five-time race-winner in his own right, to cause Hamilton problems. But former F1 driver Robert Doornboss has warned that he’s ‘too nice’ to prevail in a title fight with his veteran teammate.
One Ferrari insider expects the team to gather around their new arrival in much the same way as it once did Michael Schumacher. Leclerc will have to handle that potentially seismic shift at Maranello.
Much like in Singapore six years ago, Hamilton may arrive amid external doubts. Mark Webber is among those to suggest that Ferrari could regret axing the in-form Carlos Sainz for a struggling replacement.
As much as it has been a bleak year for the Mercedes man, he’s still produced flashes of brilliance. Most notably, he delivered what Nico Rosberg called a ‘magical’ lap in the Shanghai rain last time out to claim second on the grid for the Sprint.
The post ‘Have to be very careful’: Lewis Hamilton pinpoints moment where he proved Toto Wolff wrong at Mercedes appeared first on F1 Oversteer.