After 12 seasons, 246 Grands Prix, 84 victories and six drivers’ championships with Mercedes, the curtain will come down on one of the most storied periods in Formula 1 on Sunday.
Lewis Hamilton bows out of Mercedes, leaving behind a legacy on and off the track. Next year, at 40, he will “fulfill a childhood dream,” he said, and drive for Ferrari.
“We’ve had an absolutely incredible journey together,” he said of Mercedes. “We’ve created history within the sport, and it’s something I take a lot of pride in, and I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved.”
On joining Ferrari, Hamilton said he “felt like it was time to start a new chapter” in his career.
“It was not that difficult to convince Lewis” to join, Fred Vasseur, the Ferrari team principal, said. “It is a move that has been 20 years in the making,” he added, referring to when Hamilton drove for Vasseur’s team in the Formula 3 Euro Series in 2005.
“At the time he was tied to McLaren-Mercedes,” Vasseur, said, “but he already had in mind that sooner or later he would go to Ferrari.”
Hamilton departs Mercedes as the most successful driver in the team’s history, and it will miss him.
“He said he needed change, and I can understand that,” Toto Wolff, the team principal, said. “We’ve been together 12 years, and we’ve had tremendous success.
“He’s the most successful driver. We’ve had this sensational journey together, and that’s something that will go down in the history books, and also in the Mercedes history books.”
Hamilton joined Mercedes in 2013 after six years with McLaren, where he won his first championship in 2008. Andrew Shovlin, track-side engineering director with Mercedes, said Hamilton “has been a massive part of the growth of the team.”
From 2014, following a change in the power-unit regulations, Mercedes dominated. The team won eight consecutive constructors’ titles and Hamilton six drivers’ championships in seven years. He missed a record eighth in 2021 when he was beaten by Max Verstappen of Red Bull on the final lap of the last race.
“He’s achieved such an amount that it all just becomes part of the team’s legacy,” Shovlin said, in an interview in November. “When he arrived, the first thing you saw was the speed, the determination.
“Over the years, what has been almost endless is his desire and ability to reinvent himself over the winter, to learn from mistakes, to improve, to look for the areas where he would find another gain to beat his competitors. He just kept getting better and better for so long.”
Shovlin said Hamilton “has a phobia of losing that drives his work ethic.” From a technical perspective, he has “a great ability to drive around problems in the car. Whatever the problem, whatever the conditions, whatever the limitation, he seemed to have a tool for the job.”
Ron Meadows, the sporting director with Mercedes, said Hamilton is unique because he “can departmentalize his life.”
“When he comes racing, he’s fully focused on his racing,” Meadows said in an interview in November. “Then you’ll see a social media post that he’s 12 hours away on a plane somewhere doing something completely different. He’s got so much going on in his life, and that’s what makes him special.
“When he’s at a racetrack, he’s all over it. When he’s at the factory, he’s all over it, but he knows when he can relax, and some drivers can’t do that. That’s probably the most unique part about him.”
When Hamilton doesn’t have a great session or makes a mistake, he beats himself up, but “the impressive thing about him is the next morning you wouldn’t have known it had happened,” Meadows said. “I’d say 100 percent of the time he bounces back really strong.”
During his time with Mercedes, Hamilton has built a portfolio of interests, notably music, fashion and film. He has a production company involved in the upcoming movie “F1,” starring Brad Pitt. He is also part of the ownership group of the Denver Broncos.
Hamilton has also worked to improve diversity, equity and inclusion inside Mercedes and in motorsport.
In late 2020, Hamilton and Mercedes started Accelerate 25, a five-year program aimed at getting at least 25 percent of all new team employees from underrepresented groups.
The following year, Hamilton and Mercedes formed Ignite, a charitable partnership to increase the representation of people from underrepresented backgrounds in British motorsport. It later merged into Hamilton’s Mission 44 charity, which seeks to transform the lives of young people from underserved backgrounds by narrowing opportunity gaps in education and employment.
“When I think about what I leave behind, the thing I am most proud of is the work we’ve done with diversity,” Hamilton said. “We have a very diverse team now.”
Hamilton said Wolff and the rest of the team were open to his ideas. “The team put their money where their mouth is and invested.”
Hamilton has been assured the effort will continue after he leaves. “When I saw Toto to tell him I was leaving, I said there’s going to be no one in the room that’s going to have these difficult conversations with you,” he said.
“I said to him that I hope he continues with that, and he said he will.”
The catalyst for Hamilton was the death of George Floyd in May 2020 at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
“It brought it to the fore and gave it the urgency and prominence that it had,” Bradley Lord, the chief communications officer at Mercedes, said in an interview in November.
“Lewis had spoken to Toto and asked what we could do with the car that was significant, would mark the moment and make a statement. He felt a great weight of responsibility as the sport’s only Black driver. He wanted to understand if, and how, Mercedes could stand with him in taking a stand.”
After considerable discussion, Mercedes changed its renowned silver livery to black for the 2020 season. It remains black today.
“It was a symbol to our commitment to building a more diverse and inclusive sport and as a categorical statement to end racism, which was a strong statement at the time,” Lord said.
“There was a lot of pushback, a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of angry communication to the team, to different subsidiaries of Mercedes-Benz around the globe, people saying they would never buy another car from the brand. To Mercedes’ great credit, there was no wavering whatsoever in the face of that.”
The implementation of Accelerate 25 has resulted in a change in the demographic and makeup of the team, with more women and more workers from diverse ethnic and national backgrounds.
Hamilton leaves that behind, and it is on to Ferrari. Vasseur, the Ferrari team principal, said in an interview in April that signing Hamilton was “a no-brainer for tons of reasons.”
Hamilton has struggled for the last three seasons at Mercedes. He has won only two Grands Prix in that period, both this year.
Vasseur said Hamilton “will add value” and that “he comes to win, not on vacation. I’m convinced we have everything to try.”
Hamilton will be scratching a longtime itch. “For every driver growing up, watching the history, watching Michael Schumacher in his prime, I think probably all of us sit in our garage and see the screen pop up, and you see the driver in the red cockpit and you wonder what it would be like to be surrounded by the red,” Hamilton said.
“Even as a kid, I used to play as Michael in that car,” referring to video games, “so it definitely is a dream, and I’m really excited about it.”
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