F1 Great Lewis Hamilton Announces Shock Move From Mercedes ...

2 Feb 2024

Forbes

BAHRAIN, BAHRAIN - NOVEMBER 29: Race winner Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain and Mercedes GP ... [+] celebrates in Bahrain on November 29, 2020. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

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F1’s Lewis Hamilton’s momentous announcement could be one of the biggest driver moves in the sport’s history. Since yesterday, the motor sport world has been buzzing with news that 7-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton will resign his seat at Mercedes and move to Ferrari for the 2025 season.

It would seem as though the British driver does not feel that Mercedes can offer him a winning car so he wants a change. Interestingly, he’d only just signed a two-year contract last year for 2024-2025, which makes this decision such a big shock. We are now learning that the said contract includes a ‘release clause’ for 2025 that Hamilton has chosen to activate before even testing the new car for this year.

Even though he may not have confidence in the team to dig itself out of the performance hole it’s in right now, the champion driver did say, ”I am 100% committed to delivering the best performance I can this season and making my last year with the Silver Arrows, one to remember.”

Lewis Hamilton congratulates race winner and 2021 F1 World Drivers Champion Max Verstappen at Abu ... [+] Dhabi at Yas Marina Circuit on December 12, 2021. (Photo by Lars Baron/Getty Images)

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The shock reveal came after a hurriedly arranged meeting at the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One headquarters yesterday in Brackley, 70 miles northwest of London.

Hamilton’s eventual move had been rumored for several years, but his recent comments around the Mercedes team appeared to put the prospect of a move to bed. Now, it’s official. Hamilton will swap for Ferrari in 2025 and his motivations for the move are multiple.

He has not won a race since 2021 and he’d ideally like to win again, but this time in a Ferrari. It would seem as though Hamilton’s long-time colleague, Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur, who he raced for back in the F3 and GP2 series, played a strong role in convincing the Briton that a Ferrari seat gave him a better chance for winning than Mercedes. And with the Prancing Horse’s storied history of racing and the world most desirable supercars, Hamilton has commented in the past of his adoration for Ferrari. For Lewis, the Maranello move is a definite bucket list moment.

There is one more key factor behind the Briton’s decision to exit Mercedes. We are also hearing from technical sources which suggest that Loic Serra’s departure from the German carmaker has played a key role in Hamilton’s decision. Serra was the Head of Vehicle Performance at Mercedes before being poached by Ferrari for the 2025 campaign. Apparently, Serra believed the Mercedes F1 car needed to follow one development direction, as did Hamilton, by the Mercedes team, headed by Mike Elliott, believed in a different direction. The recent race results seem to prove Serra right.

British driver Lewis Hamilton celebrates his win at Silverstone on July 18, 2021 in Northampton, ... [+] England. (Photo by Lars Baron/Getty Images)

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Hamilton, too. “The time is right for me to take this step and I’m excited to be taking on a new challenge,” he said. He is the most successful F1 driver ever with 103 wins, 104 pole positions and seven titles (equalling Michael Schumacher’s 7 world championships), with six of those wins coming at Mercedes between 2014 and 2020.

Mercedes supremo Toto Wolff commented that the Lewis link-up had been the most successful team-driver partnership in F1 history. "However, we knew our partnership would come to a natural end at some point, and that day has now come. We accept his decision to seek a fresh challenge, and our opportunities for the future are exciting to contemplate,” said Wolff.

Some commentators including former F1 driver and well-known Sky TV commentator Martin Brundle complimented the timing of Hamilton’s seismic announcement. “The sport needed this. Over the past week, we’ve heard news about triple F1 champion Max Verstappen ensconced at Red Bull, Lando Norris settling in at McLaren, Charles Leclerc re-signing at Ferrari, and George Russell staying on at Mercedes. So it all looked very static and needed energizing. Well, we’ve got that now, haven’t we,” he stressed.