WeeklySA_AdminChanging lanes: After 12 years at Mercedes Lewis Hamilton the only black Formula One driver moves over to Ferrari
By Sports Reporter
Lewis Hamilton says his final race with Mercedes in Abu Dhabi this weekend is unlikely to be the positive send-off he and the team would have wanted.
“I don’t think it will end on a high,” said Hamilton, who is moving to Ferrari for 2025. “It’ll end. What’s important is we turn up and give it our best shot.” Hamilton has had a difficult final season with Mercedes, and it’s only become more so as it has wound to its close.
He arrives in Abu Dhabi after last weekend’s race in Qatar, during which he said at one point he was “definitely not fast any more”, and finished 12th after receiving two separate penalties.
It was the culmination of a season of frustration, with Hamilton comprehensively out-performed in qualifying by team-mate George Russell. Two wins at Silverstone and Spa – his first for two and a half years – were highs, but have done little to lift his general mood.
He and Mercedes, though, are insistent a low-key end to their partnership will not detract from everything they have achieved together.
Team boss Toto Wolff said: “When he took the decision to go, we knew it could be a bumpy year ahead. It’s normal.
“He knows he will go somewhere else. We know our future lies somewhere else. And to go through the ups and downs and still keep it together is something we have achieved.
“He wears his heart on his sleeve and you express your emotions and that is absolutely allowed. Nothing is going to take away 12 incredible years. That will be in the memory, rather than a season or races that were particularly bad.”
Together, Hamilton and Mercedes have been the most successful team-driver combination in Formula 1 history. After he joined in 2013, Mercedes won eight consecutive constructors’ championships, seven drivers’ titles – six of them for Hamilton – and 120 grands prix.
Hamilton has become the most successful driver ever – taking six of his seven championships with Mercedes, 84 of his 105 race wins, and 78 of his 104 poles.
His other successes came with McLaren when they were Mercedes’ works team. Next year – his 19th in Formula 1 – will be his first not as a Mercedes driver.
The team are determined to turn this weekend’s grand prix – held on a track where Hamilton has won five times, more than any other driver – into a celebration of everything they have achieved together.
They will be doing it at the place where Hamilton’s success with Mercedes came to a screeching halt amid the controversy of the title-deciding race in 2021.
Three years ago, Hamilton was on course to win a record eighth championship, having dominated the race from the start, only for race director Michael Masi to fail to apply the rules correctly during a late safety-car period.
Masi’s decisions to override protocol over the handling of lapped cars and the timing of a restart were followed by Max Verstappen passing Hamilton when the race was restarted for one final lap and the title changing hands.
After a winter in which Hamilton considered walking away from F1, he and Mercedes started the following season still reeling from the perceived injustice of that day, but determined to right what they saw as a wrong.
Instead they have floundered – failing to get on top of the new technical rules introduced for 2022. This lack of competitiveness was part of Hamilton’s decision to leave for Ferrari – a team he had always dreamed of joining at one point.
The trigger was that, when he negotiated a new contract in the summer of 2023, Wolff initially wanted to give him only a one-year deal to retain flexibility about the future of his driver line-up with Hamilton approaching the age of 40.
They compromised on a one-year contract with an option for an extra season. But Hamilton knew he wanted to stay in F1 for longer. So when Ferrari came calling last winter, offering him a substantial pay rise – it is said he will earn $65m (£41m) a year at Maranello – and a longer commitment, Hamilton went for it.
Hamilton’s legacy with Mercedes is about more than on-track performance and breaking records. He has led a push for more diversity and inclusion – not just at Mercedes but in F1 as a whole.
As F1’s only black driver, and its most celebrated figure, Hamilton has a unique platform, and has been determined to use it for good.
“The thing I am most proud of,” Hamilton says, “when I think about what I leave behind, I hope in a positive way, is the work we have done with diversity and inclusion. “From the first moment sitting down with Toto, him and the whole team being open-minded. They have all gone on diversity and inclusion courses.
“We have a very diverse team now, which is something I am really grateful to have been a part of. Among other changes, Mercedes has instigated a programme called Accelerate 25, which demands that 25% of all new hires come from an under-represented background.
Hamilton won his most recent drivers’ championship in 2020, clinching the title with victory at the Turkish Grand Prix The relationship ends on a bittersweet note. There has been no eighth title, no revenge for Abu Dhabi 2021, and the success has dried up.
But the achievements remain, indelible, undeniable.
