On the evening of February 1st, the coup of the century for the world of F1 was made official: Lewis Hamilton will be a Ferrari driver from 2015. An agreement that, after being speculated on and denied several times, came to fruition, shaping a relationship between the most successful team and driver in the history of F1. A union which, as we have learned, will last several years and will bring the Englishman to Italy when he has already turned forty. A move desired by Cavallino’s boss, John Elkann, moved by his esteem for the Mercedes standard bearer, but also by some indisputable benefits that the world championship title will bring.
A partnership that will end after 11 years, with a team where he rewrote F1 history. The Italian part of “Motorsport.com” talked about, underlined the signing of the renewal of Lewis’ contract as the moment in which the mechanism that then led to his farewell was activated: in the formula of ‘1+1’, wanted more by Stuttgart than Toto Wolff.
Hamilton left because Mercedes opened the door for him. The Austrian boss would have handed a two-year renewal to the seven-time world champion, but it seems that the constraints for a shorter duration came from the higher-ups in Stuttgart. The agreement reached appears to have been for one year with the option for a second. Both the driver and the team could exercise an exit clause. The revolving door, therefore, was set in motion when the contract was signed. A strange decision for a driver who, although is approaching the end of his career, had placed faith in Mercedes to create a role that would extend well beyond his career in F1.
An option that led to the Englishman’s decision to accept Ferrari’s offer, both for the possibility of freeing himself and, perhaps, due to unfulfilled expectations on the part of the parent company.
Although the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team has always been generous in supporting Hamilton’s social activism, something must have gone wrong if the seven-time world champion who had professed absolute loyalty to the German brand gave in to offers from John Elkann and Ferrari and decided to join the Scuderia. Was the role Hamilton aspired to have no longer available? He had once hoped to even join the Mercedes board of directors. The fact is that it has come to nothing.
A clause born out of Mercedes’ desire not to suddenly find itself, as happened with Nico Rosberg in 2016, with a driver ready to retire, in the event of such a decision by Hamilton faced with a car that is once again not performing following a rough 2022 and 2023. A scenario that did not foresee a change of scenery for the 103-time Grand Prix winner and seven-time World Champion.
The German parent company would have wanted to be cautious about Lewis’ future: the doubts were not so much that he would be enchanted by Scuderia Ferrari, but rather that he might decide to stop suddenly, as Nico Rosberg had done after winning the 2016 world championship. The idea, therefore, was to have a response from Hamilton by the end of February, before the 2024 season got underway and it was clear what level of competitiveness the W15 had, which Lewis had way to discover only on the simulator.
Hamilton, who has never made mistakes regarding moving teams, will have had precise guarantees on what Ferrari’s growth will be by 2026. The move would have started in Germany, unleashing a sequence of events that led to the biggest transfer in F1 history.
