Lewis Hamilton switches from Team Mercedes to Team Ferrari for the Formula 1 2025 season

Dear motor racing fans

A while ago, there was news about Lewis Hamilton confirmed to switch from the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team to the Scuderia Ferrari Team for the Formula 1 2025 season, replacing Carlos Sainz Jr. and I'm curious to see how well he will perform along with his future teammate (Charles Leclerc), meanwhile what if Mick Schumacher returns to F1, I wonder how well he is going to perform, but currently, he is Team Mercedes' reserve driver and going to race for Team Alpine Elf Endurance in World Endurance Championship 2024 season.

What are your thoughts on this?
How Lewis Hamilton’s sensational move from Mercedes to Ferrari played out | Formula 1®

Worried... maybe, is the word i'd use.

Danny O'Dwyer likes to bring up the racial aspect of the crowd's behaviour towards Hamilton, but there's no denying that he's always had a frosty reception from Ferrari fans at Monza, even one time having "black cats thrown at him" (how?). It's hard to say if there's been any change in that respect because him being booed on the podium requires that he... be on the... podium, which is an ever decreasing sight these days.

Part of that is the Mercedes lack of performance, but there's also the suggestion that post covid he wasn't the same unstoppable force anymore, it's not unreasonable to suggest someone is getting slower after doing it for 17 years, so his move to the feisty fiery prancing horse feels a little late, the car has been getting faster but the reliability is still a shot in the dark at times, if he can't come out of the gates swinging in 2024 these are the people he has to answer to.

I don't see any evidence he's slowing down. Lewis' 2022 season wasn't great but he also had sacrificed his season to try to experiment with setups to get Merc's overly complicated car working well, which didn't end up happening. His 2023 season was exceptionally good. He was third in the standings in a car that looked incapable of winning and Hamilton basically carried Mercedes to second place in the Constructor's standings. Without losing a bunch of points to that disqualification that wasn't his fault, he would have been within sprinting distance of beating Perez, who was driving the statistically most dominant car in the history of F1, to second in the Driver's Championship. Hamilton also dumpstered George Russell and made him look extremely average last year.

That said, I'm still unsure of how this all will go. Hamilton is used to a team that is operationally top notch. Mercedes is an extremely organized team that has plans for basically every situation and never hesitates with strategy calls. Ferrari is essentially the opposite of that and I could see it becoming increasingly frustrating for Lewis if Ferrari keeps up their decade-long tendency to make garbage strategy calls and throw away good results. The rumours that Hamilton is bringing Pete Bonnington, his race engineer for the last decade, with him make a lot of sense. I'm sure he doesn't want the guy who Vettel and Sainz had as an engineer since on occasion both of them got so angry at the guy that they ended up doing their own race strategies (which, funnily enough, usually worked out well for them).

I'm also curious who will take Hamilton's seat at Mercedes. Sainz is supposedly going to Sauber/Audi after this year so he's probably not in the running. Alonso is obviously great but his age is up there and could catch up with him sooner rather than later. An actual realistic option is Alex Albon, which is wild to say given where his career was at a few years back. He's driving well enough now that I wouldn't even blink if they announced him. Other than that, we'd be getting into the territory of Mercedes buying out contracts, which is way harder to predict. Merc can certainly afford to buy out contracts given that they're not paying tens of millions a year for Hamilton now. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Hoping Fernando is getting that Mercedes seat

@rebel_scum: That would be the funniest outcome imaginable.

My concern is that Hamilton is falling for the same trap that Vettel and Alonso fell for of thinking, "but what if I won in a Ferrari?" and that it would go about as well. I doubt Mick is ever getting back into an F1 car, but I can see there being a straight swap of Hamilton for Sainz. Carlos is the most reliable journeyman in the sport, and he had his Best Of The Rest year with a Mercedes powertrain. Merc has a year of leeway to figure it out, so maybe they'll find a way to poach Lando.

If anything, the idea of Kimi and Alonso carrying on into their 40's probably gave him the motivation to carry on. I thought he'd be done by now but here we are. He's not slipping down the order from his own ability so he probably sees Ferrari as one last adventure.

I can't think of who would entirely fit the bill for the Mercedes seat. Russell probably sees himself as team leader but I have Sainz down as a genuinely smarter racer. He's a good bet if they want to grab some sneaky results. Then again, 2025 could have some wunderkind on the horizon. Or maybe get Piastri from McLaren. Sorry, Lando. I just think him and Russell in the same team offers no exciting contrast.

I've been seeing a lot of folks say Mercedes should buy Piastri's McLaren contract out. I actually agree with that. Oscar was very clearly a rookie last year but we already were starting to see some flashes of brilliance from him and on a few occasions he looked better than Lando already. He still has to come to grips with the tires better and become more consistent, but if he manages to fix those things he may become one of the best drivers on the grid. Mercedes need that if they want to win championships. Russell, especially last year, seemed to crack under pressure a lot and put in a lot of performances that have made him seem less like a championship-calibre driver than he used to. He threw away a probable win in Singapore and made several other rather costly errors. His qualifying hasn't been fantastic either generally, even factoring in the Merc's weaker performance.

I somehow doubt Zak Brown is interested in trading away Piastri after all of the work he went through to get him on board in the first place though. It would have to be a pretty big cheque for him to allow Piastri to leave.

@shindig: That's how i see it too, he has said before about dreaming of driving for Ferrari but depending on how the 2025 car turns out it could easily become a nightmare, it won't be long before Leclerc's hair turns grey from frustration if the car doesn't get better and the team don't start making better decisions during the races.

Something else i just thought about, Hamilton famously gets involved as much as he can with car development and getting familiar with the team, and with the Mercedes and previously the McLaren F1 teams being based in the UK that's been pretty natural though he lives in Monaco. I'm guessing Ferrari is still based in Maranello and Hamilton doesn't speak Italian, which is fine English speakers are often always around, but he might have trouble getting as involved as he has been before.

When i saw the news i assumed it was an immediate move but apparently he's signed for 2025 so he's still driving for Mercedes for another year, in an interview with Jensen Button about the move he ponders if the team will start holding back information from Lewis since he's going to be moving to a rival team, i'm sure most of the team are more professional than that and will be working hard regardless, but it is a bit awkward.

Yeah, this announcement seems awkward for the teams in the same way the 2020 announcement that Vettel wouldn't be getting a new contract at Ferrari was since he was still contracted to drive for that year. It did make for interesting watching though when the season actually started since Vettel was much less risk-averse and did a lot of bold things he previously wouldn't have done (most notably, going against team strategy several times. Each time it ended up benefiting him. It almost felt like he was making a point about how bad Ferrari's strategy team was. It also was reminiscent of when Kimi lost his contract with Ferrari then stopped following team orders and had much better results including a final win). Hopefully we see something like that from Hamilton now since he's no longer tied to Mercedes' future and is mostly just driving for himself now.

More concrete reporting has popped up that Hamilton may be taking his race engineer, Pete Bonnington, with him. Mercedes has already acknowledged that talks on this subject are probably going to happen soon.

Does this change Ferrari's fortunes? No. Ferrari's current Elkann guy running them has been bad at his job for five years. I think it is safe to say Ferrari will never win another driver's championship during my lifetime. Ultimately, FIA screwed over my interest in the coming season by basically giving it to Red Bull thanks to Newey being the greatest aero engineer in F1 in human history.

That said, the issue with people in the F1 community STILL not giving Hamilton his due for being the GOAT or at least near GOAT levels is and has been racially coded and bums me the fuck out.

Yeah John Elkann nepotisming his way into running Ferrari and then chasing out most of the people who seemed like they knew what was needed to fix the team has been a huge bummer to watch as a former Ferrari fan. He is extremely averse to making the types of changes needed to fix the team's many problems. Ferrari's strategy and race management has been a problem for the better part of a decade now yet somehow in the last few seasons has become even worse.

The team finally seemed on the upward trajectory at the start of 2018 but after the death of their previous leader, all of that progress stalled out and has in some ways regressed. They are now basically a midfield-calibre team that occasionally builds frontrunning cars. They could have a car almost at Red Bull levels of dominant and still somehow screw up enough operationally that it would make the championship close.

Vegas was the most Elkann shit imaginable and it was HILARIOUS! Ferrari fucking up and helping Max win a race he absolutely hated all weekend... you can't make this shit up.

And it's 2024 and this is STILL how I feel whenever I see Team Ferrari pit:

Both Ferrari drivers are having very good results at the moment which suggest that they have a good enough car to compete with Red Bull and McLaren. It would be a real possibility for Hamilton to win another World Championship at Ferrari.

Lewis moving to Ferrari does increasingly look like the correct move. Now that Ferrari has booted out parted ways with Laurent Mekies and other former strategy people, they've actually been pretty good with regards to race strategy this year. This year McLaren has taken over as the team that wears the strategy and operational clown shoes. McLaren has thrown away at least a couple race wins while Ferrari has won multiple races not just through misfortune of others or lucky coin flips, but through solid performance and race planning. They have two drivers who are maximizing the result possible every weekend and it's now entirely reasonable to say they could win second in the constructor's championship over Red Bull and are a couple DNFs away from even being in contention against McLaren.

Meanwhile Mercedes still looks completely lost. They had that 3-4 weekend stint in the summer there where it did seem like they might have finally fixed their car and won three races but that's all fallen apart again since the break. Even worse, it seems like there's something going on with the car aerodynamically that the team don't understand that is causing the rear of the car to lose rear downforce and start bouncing. We've seen both drivers crashing out the exact same way several weekends in a row now and each time it's an uncatchable spin that happens suddenly with no warning. The one that happened with Hamilton in the US GP was particularly bad since his onboard video didn't show anything happening before the spin. He wasn't pushing hard and the car wasn't unsettled but then suddenly he was in a tailspin. Mercedes claimed it was a wind gust but given that it didn't impact any of the other cars near Hamilton, I'm kind of viewing that as an excuse to cover up that they don't know why their car did what it did.

@ben_h: Toto going with Kimi Antonelli is... I mean you gotta give it to him, it's something. Wolff can say he made his mind up on Kimi instantly, but that's bullshit. Toto made up his mind... after Max and Carlos said "no." Despite having a ton of potential and clearly having natural F1 skills, he still did crash almost immediately during the Monza FP1. You know, his second lap in F1. Like others have said, I like Kimi in F1 if he was on Williams, but on Mercedes? Man, that's going to be rough for him considering the car is going to be more of a handful.

This gamble might pan out, but it is also completely contingent on Antonelli developing as fast as Piastri did.

They had one Grand Prix where they didn't fuck up the strategy, and even then, that one-two finish came about because McLaren shit the bed thanks to an iffy penalty. And yet, people are sounding the alarm that their tactics and pits aren't an issue. I'll say this, it will be funny as all shit if Hamilton pits and they aren't ready for him and he loses positions the say Carlos has.

Part of the reason why Hamilton won the British Grand Prix this season is because Ferrari put Leclerc on the wrong tires at the wrong time. Watching his run around and rip up his slicks was one of the most painful things I have seen this season.

Also, the real loser of all these driver shifts feels like Liam Lawson because if he doesn't get a seat for 2025, he might as well see if anyone in WEC or IndyCar is interested.

Oh yeah, for sure, Ferrari aren't perfect. But at least it's not like it used to be where every other race contained a massive obvious strategy blunder. McLaren and VCARB have been making Ferrari look a lot more competent this year by comparison. McLaren has had comfortably the fastest car at most races since Miami but they still struggle to consistently win races unless their performance advantage for the weekend is huge.

Yeah, he's in a tough spot. He certainly did well last weekend (though he got pretty lucky with race strategy. Every driver who did the strategy Lawson did made up a bunch of places) but he has to keep it up consistently. Horner doesn't seem super keen on him and he makes the final call for drivers. Lawson is certainly a good driver but some of the hype around him has become so extreme that if feels like he'll never be able to live up to it.

Franco Colapinto has also made things a lot more complicated for Lawson. Colapinto is basically matching Albon already and has caught everyone's eye, including Helmut Marko. Driving analysts have already observed that Colapinto drives in a similar manner to Hamilton and Leclerc and has a lot of potential (Vowles also said that almost immediately they could tell that Colapinto was not the standard driver when he hopped into their simulator. He was close to Albon's sim times within a short time of starting at Williams). Colapinto also has a huge corporate sponsor now and the potential for a lot more since Argentinians are hardcore about supporting their sports people. His popularity is growing so quickly that other teams are using him as engagement bait. It makes sense. His English interviews are pretty standard but his Spanish interviews are generally very goofy and fun. The dude doesn't hide his personality and it resonates with fans. I've already seen comparisons between him and Danny Ric, which is wild. I'm not sure if Colapinto will end up in a seat next year, but it feels almost certain that he will for 2026 otherwise.