The news of the year
The 2024 championship has not yet started, nor have the pre-season tests, yet for the 2025 some unexpected news has already been made official: Lewis Hamilton will be Ferrari's next driver. The Brit will join Charles Leclerc in Maranello, and above all he will leave Mercedes after having won six world titles with it between 2014 (one year after its arrival in Brackley) and 2020. Even before this step, the #44 will therefore have to contest another season with the Anglo-German team. Yet, analyzing the contract signed only last year, Hamilton should have remained with Mercedes until the end of 2025. For the 39-year-old, however, the time had come to leave, as stated in the official press release released by the 'three-star tips'. The official announcement emerged on February 1st, but the Englishman had already made the decision to approach Ferrari several days ago, as confirmed by the Team Principal Toto Wolff.
Disturbed by the timing
In a meeting with the media, the Austrian manager explained the sequence of facts that led Hamilton to sign with the Reds: “When we renewed the contract with Lewis we opted for a shorter duration – Wolff admitted – the events were not a surprise, rather the timing. We met for coffee at my house in Oxford and he returned to the factory and told me that he had decided to race for Ferrari in 2025. In practice it went like this, we had a good hour of conversation and… we got to this point.”
The change of ideas
In the months following the signing of the contract, Hamilton always declared loyalty to Mercedes, only to then make a complete turn to head in the direction of Maranello. A motivation that not even Wolff can understand: “I can't say exactly – he added – I just know that we were very aligned when we faced the Christmas period on what we said in public and as a team. You have to ask Lewis why he changed his mind. The way she framed it is perfectly understandable to me: she needed a new challenge, she was looking for a different environment and maybe it was her last chance to do something else. We are great. We knew that signing a short-term contract could be beneficial for both parties. We couldn't commit for a longer period and she chose to walk out. So we totally respect the fact that you can change your mind depending on the circumstances. By moving to Ferrari, perhaps for the latest peak of his career, he is perhaps rolling the dice a bit. I can understand this decision.”
The Wolff-Hamilton pairing has generated true long-term dominance in the history of F1, with seven consecutive Drivers' titles from 2014 to 2020 (only one by Nico Rosberg) and others eight Builders from the beginning of the hybrid era until 2021. A collaboration that also turned into a friendship between the two, with Wolff reacting to his driver's future farewell from a human point of view like this: “In a way, F1 and my previous life made me resistant to surprises – he concluded – In my life I have found myself faced with unexpected events many times. It was a surprise. But, as I said before, we approached this contract with open eyes at this stage in our relationship. We knew it could be a year or two. We knew it would end, at the latest, at the end of 2025. I had heard the rumors a couple of days before, but I wanted to wait for the breakfast we had planned. It was Wednesday morning and he was the one who gave the news. With me you can be very direct, because I am too. So once she told me 'This is what I'm trying to do', it was a fact. I didn't try to convince him otherwise. But if we look to the future… what do we do for communication? What is the timeline? How do we best protect the team and how do we protect this year 2024 to be successful together with our two drivers without causing too much embarrassment?”
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