It’s the end of an era and the biggest move by a driver in the history of Formula One.
After 12 seasons, six world championships and 82 victories, Lewis Hamilton leaves Mercedes for Ferrari.
It’s a day that many thought would never come. Hamilton himself said last year that he expected to remain with Mercedes “until my last days”, and that “there was nowhere I would rather be”.
But the allure of a surprise move to Ferrari, announced on Thursday for 2025, proved too strong for the seven-time champion seeking a record eighth world title.
It’s the kind of emotion that F1 fans – and figures at the top of the sport itself – could only have dreamed of happening. Partnering Hamilton, F1’s most famous and successful driver, with Ferrari, F1’s most famous and successful team, is box office stuff.

GO DEEPER
How Lewis Hamilton transcended Formula One stardom
Ferrari will likely enter the 2025 season with F1’s strongest lineup while Hamilton will race alongside Charles Leclerc, its young star. Considering the “superteam” lineups, aside from the implausible prospect of Hamilton teaming up with Max Verstappen, it’s hard to think of anything bigger.
Regardless of the outcome, this will be one of F1’s biggest stories for the next two years, as 39-year-old Hamilton sets out to write the last – and potentially final – chapter of his glittering F1 career in Ferrari’s famous red cars. .
But why leave Mercedes on the eve of the new season, for a team that hasn’t won a championship for 15 years?

Since winning his first drivers’ championship with Mercedes (the second of his career), Hamilton has been inextricably linked to the Silver Arrows. (Darren Heath/Getty Images)
A loss of confidence in Mercedes?
Hamilton and Mercedes have formed one of the greatest teams the sport has ever seen.
Six of Hamilton’s seven world titles came between 2014 and 2020, his only defeat in that period coming to teammate Nico Rosberg in 2016. Together Hamilton and Mercedes dominated F1, fending off the threat of Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel, once vaunted as the combination that could have ended years of silverware success in 2017-20.
Hamilton came within one correct race control decision at the 2021 finale in Abu Dhabi of beating Michael Schumacher’s record and winning an eighth world title, only for Verstappen to overtake him on a final-lap restart and deny him the crown.
The controversy put Hamilton on a redemptive arc. Fueled by that pain, 2022 became the season in which he was supposed to reclaim what should have been his, only for Mercedes to build a car that simply wasn’t up to the task. Hamilton knew from the moment he first drove the W13 that it wasn’t good enough to win a title. It wasn’t even enough to win one race, forcing him to spend the first season of his F1 career without a single win.
The fighting has continued over the past year. Hamilton was often frustrated by the limitations of his car, forcing him to endure another winless season as Verstappen and Red Bull dominated the race. After the final race of the year in Abu Dhabi, Hamilton summed up his mood as “not great” and questioned whoever Red Bull will take in 2024: “You can pretty much guess where they’ll be next year.”

Hamilton’s fortunes have declined since winning his seventh drivers’ championship in 2020. (Salih Zeki Fazlioglu/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Mercedes had already started overhauling its car for 2024, after abandoning its radical “zeropod” concept mid-last year. Expectations were managed, but there was greater confidence on the part of the team that the car coming out of Brackley this year would not have the same “naughty” traits, to quote technical director James Allison, and that it would give Hamilton greater chance of success.
Hamilton will not be able to have an extended drive with Mercedes until the start of pre-season testing in Bahrain later this month. A first taste will be had during the shakedown at Silverstone, when the car is launched on February 14, and Hamilton will have driven a model in the simulator which will give an indication of what to expect. But there will be no true understanding of the W15 car’s potential until he actually drives it.
The decision to abandon ship now suggests doubts about Mercedes’ ability to change course and return to the summit from which it once looked down on F1 competition. If Hamilton was fully confident that Mercedes was the right place to win the eighth title he wants, he would not consider going elsewhere, especially given the emotional ties he has to the team.
It will give Hamilton and Mercedes a “long goodbye” until 2024, one last year together to try to succeed. But there will also be the embarrassment of the team planning for the post-Hamilton era without his involvement, phasing him out of top-level meetings.
What Ferrari can offer
This is the big question mark about moving. Mercedes has shown little sign of being able to seriously challenge for a championship in the last two years, but neither has Ferrari.
The team made a strong start to F1’s new set of regulations in 2022, going toe-to-toe with Red Bull before regressing over race distances. Although they were the only team other than Red Bull to win a race last year, courtesy of Carlos Sainz in Singapore, Ferrari’s main battle was with Mercedes. He ultimately lost the race for second place in the championship by three points.
Like Mercedes, Ferrari has promised an overhaul of its car this year, which will feature 95 percent new components. It will lay the foundations for Hamilton’s first Ferrari F1 car in 2025, the last under the current rules before the design rules change significantly again for 2026. This is the year most considered to offer the best chance of placing end to the dominance of Verstappen and Red Bull.

Hamilton raced for current Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur’s ART Grand Prix team in its early days, and they have remained in close contact ever since. (Formula 1/Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images)
Hamilton’s age must also be considered. He will be 40 when he arrives at Ferrari and, although he remains in excellent physical condition and has expressed no doubts about his long-term future, he is not in a position to invest in a long-term project like many of his younger counterparts.
This means there will be a need for immediate success once Hamilton joins the team in 2025, but his pending arrival will only help give Maranello momentum. The team is on a recruitment drive and the lure of working with Hamilton can only help it attract top-level technical talent that could aid its bid to win another championship.
On a pure competitive level, moving from Mercedes to Ferrari seems like a lateral move. But there is one thing that Ferrari offered Hamilton that Mercedes – and, frankly, any other team – cannot.
The romance behind the move
Ferrari has always enjoyed a mythical air in F1. It’s rooted in the history of the sport. You think of F1 and you think of Ferrari.
No team boasts such prestige and ability. Even in the non-championship periods, like the current one dating back to 2008, it has remained a team that most drivers dream of racing for one day. Toto Wolff, Mercedes’ team principal, even admitted in 2019 that “it’s probably in every driver’s mind to drive at Ferrari one day.”
Or, as Vettel once said: “Everyone is a Ferrari fan. Even if they say no, they are Ferrari fans.”
There is a certain degree of romance behind the move. Hamilton has owned Ferrari road cars and has a close friendship with John Elkann, the president of Ferrari. It will also see Hamilton reunite with Fred Vasseur, Ferrari’s main team. Hamilton raced for Vasseur’s ART Grand Prix team when he was leading F1, and they have remained in close contact ever since.
Hamilton has always had great respect for the history of F1. He is passionate about his roots and his history, which means the weight of Ferrari will not escape him. It’s a team that many of F1’s biggest names have driven for at some stage in their careers.
Succeeding with Ferrari is, in many ways, the definitive F1 story – and it could be huge for Hamilton’s legacy. For his last hurray in F1, staying with Ferrari, potentially winning a record eighth world championship, would surely be the best way to end his historic career.
The alternative? Ferrari fails to provide a car good enough for Hamilton to return to the top. The mistakes and strategic errors that have occurred too often in recent years are a source of frustration. There is no eighth world championship.
Even in that scenario, Hamilton still manages to realize the dream that many F1 drivers have, and very few realize, of racing for Ferrari. It will take some time to get used to seeing him in that famous red suit, but now it will become reality.
It’s worth remembering that when Hamilton left McLaren for Mercedes in 2013, when he had achieved just one race win since returning to F1, the decision was widely questioned. It turned out to be a masterstroke. He will hope that his judgment has proven correct once again.
(Main image by Lewis Hamilton: Dan Istitene, Bryn Lennon / Getty Images; Design: John Bradford/Atletico)