Lewis Hamilton will forever be remembered for his integral role in bringing about the Mercedes era in Formula 1.
He’ll also almost certainly go down in history as the man to bring that era to an end.
It was only five months ago that Hamilton committed to Mercedes with what was billed as a two-year contract. Though it came late, both he and the team talked about the new deal as a mere formality that would build on an ever-strengthening partnership.
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CONTENDERS IN HAMILTON RACE BROKEN DOWN… AND BIG RICCIARDO QUESTION WE CAN’T IGNORE
“I continue to feel very much at home in this family,” Hamilton said early last year, batting away speculation. “I see myself being with Mercedes until my last days, to be honest.
“If you look at the legends, Sir Stirling Moss was with Mercedes till the end of days.
“That’s been the dream for me, to one day have that — well I have that, so I mean just continue on with that and continue to build with the brand.”
Hamilton made his debut with de facto Mercedes works team McLaren in 2007. He joined the nascent factory Mercedes team within four years of its foundation. He has been integral to the most successful driver-brand partnership in F1 history.
But positions change when circumstances change, and circumstances have shifted significantly in the last five months.
MERCEDES IS NO LONGER THE PLACE TO BE
There is room to speak about Hamilton’s bombshell walkout on Ferrari’s terms — on the raw appeal of racing in motorsport’s most famous colours, on the undoubtedly powerful financial terms and on the potential bump in performance.
The pull factors, however, must be assumed to be heavily outweighed by those pushing him out of Mercedes.
The last two seasons have been difficult for Hamilton both on and off the track.
It was little over two seasons ago that what seemed like a certain eighth world title was ripped away from him by circumstances beyond his control in Abu Dhabi.
He admitted afterwards that he considered stepping away from the sport in the aftermath of the regulatory failure that handed Verstappen his first championship. Instead he decided to front up for another season to right what he saw as a sporting injustice.
But what he got in exchange for his renewed motivation were the worst two seasons in his career.
The 2022 campaign was the first in his entire car racing history to pass without at least one victory. Sixth in the standings was his lowest ever F1 finish.
His 2023 campaign was an improvement, but a distant third on the title table is unbecoming of his powers, and his winless run was extended to two full seasons.
Worse was that those improvements — and Mercedes moving up to second in the constructors championship — felt flimsy by the end of the season.
McLaren’s rapid development and Ferrari’s strong finish demoted Mercedes to fourth in pure performance terms by the end of the year. Aston Martin’s potential also threatens to demote the team even lower.
More concerning still was that McLaren is clearly on a fruitful trajectory, while Ferrari has exuded confidence that it has finally figured out how to turn its rapid qualifying car into a more consistent Sunday performer for 2024.
Mercedes, meanwhile, continued wallowing. Big upgrades through the year delivered only momentary boosts in performance and were powerless to prevent some real stinkers in the final rounds of the season.
The German marque tried hard to negate the impression that it was lost. Former technical chief James Allison was brought in to replace Mike Elliott, under whose guidance the team had made its disastrous start to the new rules. Toto Wolff also recommitted to the team principalship.
But it was never going to be enough. The introduction of the cost cap meant Mercedes couldn’t spend its way back to competitive health, and it also meant several experienced and high-profile personnel were easy pickings for other teams with budget to spend on expansion.
Suddenly what could have been a blip for the formerly dominant team was looking more like a spiral.
One can only assume that, while mulling all these factors over, Hamilton has seen confirmation of his worst fears in the development data and in the simulator for the 2024 car and forecast that wins will be no closer this year.
And if the 2024 car can’t be competitive, the 2025 car will inevitably be orphaned by the need for the team to invest maximum resource into the new regulations in 2026 at the earliest possible opportunity. His two-year contract will be wasted.
With the clock ticking on his career, all that was left for Hamilton was to publicly declare what he must feel: that his confidence in Mercedes has finally expired.
And with the keystone of the Mercedes project, put into place with his signature back in 2013, removed from the team, the Mercedes golden era can be definitively declared over.
BUT WHY FERRARI?
To move from a team with a still recent history of success to one struggling to shake an almost two-decade malaise is a bold move.
You might be tempted to believe Hamilton is simply throwing in the towel on his competitive chances in the final chapter of his career in exchange for a surely handsome Ferrari salary and nice company car.
But Hamilton has form in big making big calls — and getting them right.
It was exactly this sort of discussion that followed him from McLaren to Mercedes in 2013. Then he was still a regular winner with one of F1’s grandee teams, while the German marque had managed just one win since entering the sport as a works constructor in 2010. The sheen of its fairytale title-winning year in 2009 as Brawn — which was crumbling even as it raced to the championship — had well and truly worn off.
Hamilton, however, saw Mercedes’s plans for expansion and development and bought in. It paid off.
Of course luck plays a role, but Hamilton hasn’t become statistically the greatest of all time through dumb luck. Great racing drivers separate themselves from the pack by their off-track judgement as much as their on-track ability.
Externally there’s much to be excited about at Ferrari.
While the team endured a disappointing step backwards in competitiveness at the start of 2023, its gains late in the year were very heartening. The major upgrades it applied to the car in the second half of the campaign delivered tangible and lasting gains in performance. Carlos Sainz’s win in Singapore needed Red Bull Racing to underperform, but Charles Leclerc would have won in Las Vegas with kinder timing from the safety car.
The gaps in the team’s potential appear to have been filled in by new team boss Frédéric Vasseur. Decision-making on the pit wall has been sharpened considerably after the embarrassing errors of 2022, enough to bolster Leclerc’s faith in the team at the end of a year that appeared to genuinely test his resolve. His new contract spells it out.
The creativity of the Scuderia’s design office has always been a strength, but conservatism has sometimes weighed heavily from above when performance hasn’t immediately followed. The evidence so far is that the technical team has been empowered to be experimental again under Vasseur.
The French team boss has the team working harmoniously, with all departments rowing in one direction. That now will also apply to the drivers, with both Leclerc and Hamilton being former Vasseur protégés during their junior careers on the ladder to Formula 1. He’s remained allies of both as they’ve all independently made their way onto the top rung. Now he’s engineered his own super-team.
It’s telling that it’s now, after several fruitless approaches throughout his career, that Hamilton has been tempted to join the Scuderia.
Then of course there are all the emotional bonuses that come with being a Ferrari driver.
Somewhere deep down every driver dreams of racing in rosso corsa. Ferrari is racing’s most evocative team with the longest and most decorated history and the most prestige. While other constructors grapple with identity issues — gaze focused directly on Hinwil and Faenza — Ferrari is first among motorsport’s grandees.
Hamilton has admitted several times that he’s contemplated a Ferrari switch but that timing and circumstance meant it never made sense. Quite aside from the universal draw of Maranello, the idea that boyhood hero Ayrton Senna would have been destined for a Ferrari move before his untimely death would undoubtedly have played a small part in the romanticism of the notion.
And the worst case isn’t really any worse than his current situation. Even if Ferrari is no closer to the title than Mercedes, at least Hamilton gets to tick the box of racing for the Scuderia to soften the blow of not winning.
HISTORY BECKONS
And if the Ferrari move does succeed? Hamilton’s status in Formula 1 would be unimpeachable.
He is already statistically the greatest driver ever to have raced, with more poles and wins than any other driver and an equal-best seven championships, tying him with Michael Schumacher.
Whether he is outright the greatest to have done it is a purely subjective call, but there’s no question he’s at the pinnacle of that conversation.
Denying that, however, would be almost impossible in the event Hamilton can win his eighth championship.
In that dream scenario not only would he break Schumacher’s mythical seven-title record with the team that made the German a global icon, but he’d become just the second driver in history to win championships with three teams.
It would put him behind only Juan Manuel Fangio and his five titles with four different constructors — “the godfather of our sport,” as Hamilton called him.
And really these are the only numbers that matter. Perhaps moving from Mercedes to Ferrari is a percentage improvement at best. Maybe it’s even just a sideways move.
But for the money and prestige and romanticism of racing for Ferrari, a driver of Hamilton’s already abundant wealth and standing makes a move like this for only one reason: the pursuit of more success.
In a parallel universe Hamilton is already long retired, having won his eighth championship at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Denied that crowning achievement, Hamilton has judged Ferrari to the be the best of his available options to complete his story.
Whether he ends up being right or not, watching him write this final chapter will be fascinating.
