Hamilton in Ferrari: it's official
On the eve of the presentations of the single-seaters and the tests in preparation for the 2024 world championship, Formula 1 received the most unexpected news at the beginning of February: Lewis Hamilton will be Ferrari's new driver in 2025. A turn of events which, in the hours preceding the official announcement, had revived memories of the rumors that arose last year regarding the possible move of the seven-time world champion to Maranello, denied several times by the person concerned despite the fact that he had not yet signed the renewal of contract with Mercedes.
Sainz leaving
Speaking of extensions, and even before this press release, at Ferrari the driver who had recently renewed his promises with the Prancing Horse was Charles Leclerc, which, with the arrival of Hamilton, generated an inevitable consequence: to do the suitcases in 2025 will not be the Monegasque, but rather his current teammate Carlos Sainz, which will also have its contract expiring at the end of 2024. It will therefore be the Spaniard who will leave the Red team after arriving in 2021, when he replaced Sebastian Vettel, collecting two victories since then: one at Silverstone in 2022 (in what was his first career success) and one in Singapore in 2023, also becoming the only driver capable of climbing to the top step of the podium in the 23 races scheduled outside of Red Bull. The current question, however, is logical: what will be the destination of #55?
Audi
Already in recent weeks there had been rumors of Sainz's possible arrival in 2026 in the Stake F1 team, which will transform into the new reality that year Audi. Consequently, as reported by the newspaper Brandthe Spaniard could arrive a season early, also favored by Guanyu Zhou's contract expiring, also in this case at the end of 2024.
Mercedes
Another possibility could be that of Mercedeswhich would materialize an authentic Hamilton-Sainz exchange. The current Ferrari driver was already contacted by Wolff in 2020 as a hypothetical replacement for Valtteri Bottas, with the choice ultimately falling on George Russell. The formation of the Sainz-Russell duo therefore would not seem impossible to imagine, but attention is also focused on another Mercedes driver, who is not too distant from F1 today: Andrea Kimi Antonelli. If the young and talented Bolognese were to convince in his first year in F2, a promotion to F1 directly at Brackley could not be totally ruled out.
The unlikely scenarios
To understand the option of Red Bull: if Sergio Perez fails to assert himself in 2024, the Milton Keynes house could definitively end relations with the Mexican, thus leaving a free place as Max Verstappen's new teammate. However, if Sainz were to actually move to Red Bull, the risk of a toxic atmosphere in the team between the two drivers would reopen, as recently admitted by Helmut Marko in an interview in which he recalled the period of tensions and conflicts with the Dutchman at the start of his career at Toro Rosso. The hypothesis of Carlos Sainz in is also difficult Aston Martin. All this will depend above all on the choices of his compatriot Fernando Alonso and the desire of the two-time world champion to continue his career at the age of 43, in addition to the potential of the British single-seater. Finally, to exclude the sabbatical year from competitions before returning in 2026.
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