Tomorrow Lewis Hamilton will embark on his final grand prix as a Mercedes driver. It’s unlikely, though not impossible, that he might add to the 84 victories he’s scored since joining them. But no one is about to call his tenure at the team a failure.
Not everyone was convinced he’d made the right decision when, late in 2012, the then one-time world champion announced he would leave McLaren, the team which had brought him in to F1. After all, he had an outside shot at the title that year, though badly served by unreliability, while Mercedes won just one race.The unprecedented success Hamilton has enjoyed since joining Mercedes makes it all the more unfathomable in retrospect that anyone doubted it. But the idea of a driver overcoming their doubters is a powerful narrative, one F1 is eager to tap into in building up a mythology around one of its biggest stars.
“It’ll never work, they said,” F1 declared on social media yesterday, above a list of apparently invented historic quotes declaring Hamilton’s decision a mistake, attributed to no one. But who is the real “they” in this story, and did they truly predict Hamilton’s move would end in failure?
The announcement stung his McLaren team, who had backed his junior career and brought him into their team as a rookie – a highly unusual step for them at the time. Inevitably, those Hamilton left behind at the team cast doubt on his decision.
“He is not going to say ‘hey, they offered me more money’,” said McLaren’s team principal at the time, Martin Whitmarsh. “He is also not going to say that he’s made an awful mistake. I hope he thinks today that he’s made an awful mistake and I hope he thinks that next year. He’s made that decision and he has to live with that decision.”
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Hamilton’s last McLaren team mate Jenson Button – who joined them from the very team Hamilton was now moving to – said: “It is his decision, although I personally don’t think it is the right decision.” But realistically, McLaren team members were never going to back his decision to leave.
“That team has wins in its DNA and won the championship in its Brawn guise with Jenson,” said the former McLaren driver. “He can reset everything going to Mercedes because he is not Lewis the teenager, happy to be there and desperate to be a F1 driver. He is an existing world champion and goes there as such and will build new relationships. They see the Lewis of today rather than the Lewis as a young kid who should be grateful for the opportunity.”
Stirling Moss, a driver of a much earlier generation who raced for Mercedes in their fifties, also thought Hamilton had made a shrewd move, particularly given F1 was set to introduced new power unit regulations the year after he joined his new team.
“I would say to Lewis, be proud of the company you’re about to drive for, for they probably have the potential to become the greatest racing team again,” said Moss. “If you ask me who I would back to have a top package when the new rules come in, Mercedes would be my top gamble.”
Others were more equivocal. “He’s right to do what he thinks is best and it’s certainly not for me to be judgemental on him in that respect,” offered Martin Brundle. “Had I been his manager then I think I would have said ‘let’s do a short-term deal at McLaren, for one or two years, and let’s see what is out there and see who is moving’. He has taken a gamble.
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“Having said that, I do think Mercedes-Benz will be much better this year and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he wins a race in 2013 – in fact, I would be surprised if he doesn’t win a race because Lewis has got such speed. If Mercedes can harness that speed and give him the car, he will drag another quarter of a second per lap out of it somewhere and I think he’ll do a great job.”
Over the four seasons before Hamilton committed to Mercedes, three other car manufacturers axed their F1 programmes: Honda, Toyota and BMW. Three-times world champion Jackie Stewart suspected Mercedes could be next.
“It’s a risk,” he observed. “McLaren are in the business of Formula 1. Major carmakers come and go. There’s a risk if the Silver Arrows are not successful, it’s just a five-minute board decision [to close the team].
“Maybe it’s a risk worth taking, and I do understand Lewis’ psyche. There’s an element of him wanting to grow up, he’s no longer a little boy in karting. In some areas he felt that’s how he was treated [at McLaren]. It’s an emotional decision but it may not prove to be the right one.”
Derek Warwick made one of the strongest cases against Hamilton’s move. Noting how poor Mercedes had been at times in 2012 – they won one race but failed to score for four rounds after signing Hamilton – he was convinced their new driver would regret his chance of teams.
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“Mercedes are working on a new car but their performance this year was not just disappointing, it was very, very poor,” he said. “Mercedes have undoubtedly the fastest driver in F1 and we all want Lewis to be in a winning car next year and challenging.
It’s doubtful Hamilton endured many of the sleepless nights Warwick envisaged over the last 12 years. Though he only won once in his first season at Mercedes, his run from third to fifth on his 2013 debut was enough to make him feel vindicated.
“It’s nice to prove people wrong,” said Hamilton. “It has been everyone – particularly all the ex-drivers – a lot saying it was the worst decision ever, saying: ‘He’s going to finish nowhere; they’re going to be nowhere.’ And then they contradicted themselves, going the other way.
“They don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re either this way or that way. But it’s the bit in the middle. We have done a good job – we finished fifth. We have a lot to work on. We didn’t ever come out and say: ‘We’ll kick everyone’s butt.’ We never said that we would be crap either. The team have done well, I’m really proud of my team. I’m proud of my decision as well.”
Hamilton’s move to Mercedes proved the catalyst which took him from being a one-time champion into statistically the most successful driver of all time, with seven world championships and 105 grand prix victories. In the meantime McLaren have struggled, and only now are they poised to enjoy their first championship success since Hamilton’s 2008 title.
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“In hindsight, you look at if I had stayed, I wouldn’t have another championship to my name,” he reflected after clinching his seventh crown. “I would still be a one-time world champion after 14 years.”
The true picture was more nuanced than this. His racing driver peers expressed a mixture of views from positive to negative. Among our readers, 61% predicted Hamilton would not win the drivers’ championship during his original, three-year deal to drive for Mercedes. By the end of that spell he won two.
If Hamilton’s move to Mercedes defined the peak of his career, his coming move to Ferrari will shape how we see the end of it. He is going to Maranello to experience the glory of driving for F1’s most famous team. And he will join them off the back of one of their most successful seasons in recent years, which may yet be capped by a constructors’ championship.
For all the success he has enjoyed at Mercedes, the last three years have been thin for Hamilton. His move to Ferrari won’t just be about whether they could win – but whether he still can.
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Ideals (@ideals)
7th December 2024, 7:46
Makes you wonder how different this article would have been had circumstances not favored Mercedes so much. They had such a massive engine advantage that they were allowed to keep for years due to a number of factors, amongst which that horrible engine token system that didn’t allow for other manufacturers to really be able to close that gap (more like a canyon really). What if they had more competition, especially in the early years? What if they had ran 2014 and 2015 like they were in 2013? Would Hamilton have been there in 2016? Or would he have taken Vettel’s or Charles’ seat back then instead?
Before people take this the wrong way. Mercedes and Hamilton earned their success. They got the rule change right, they earned their advantage through their own hard work. I’m just imagining an alternate reality here.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
7th December 2024, 8:26
there is a rumor that Mercedes had been planning the move for a while and got the rule changed for them, and with the aid of mr. investor Wolff, helped usher in a new age for F1, with more investor and manufacture capitol, because the risks were lowered due to the nature of how the rules were written for the manufacturers. Renault lost F1 because it was greedy and conceited, otherwise even Honda eventually shared in the rewards.
It’s almost like Mercedes first few years in F1 was a test case, and now manufacturers feel safer moving more capitol in to something like F1 because it can be ‘controlled’ like it is. It’s obvious Pirelli were mandated to ‘spice’ up the racing with tires that were more ‘funny’. Currently they have engineered tires that are actually bad, and can’t really be pushed to the limit of the car, so you see drivers having to conserve during qualifying laps even, to make sure they don’t overheat the front tires under braking. (lots of pundits blame the new formula for Hamilton sucking, when in reality, it’s a combination of bad tires, and the [day] “ZERO” pod concept, which was just subterfuge for Wolff’s new project – George Russell #DontHateThePlayer)
The control knobs of F1, are the control tires, and the rule book, specifically the ones limiting what can and can’t be done to the engines/power units. This gives an unusually large amount of leverage to manufacturers, and sponsors/investors who want ‘close’ racing, but also those that represent the interests of larger stakeholders.
Chris (@altitude2k)
7th December 2024, 23:30
“If things had been different then people would be saying different things”
Hard to argue with that logic lol
Kotrba
7th December 2024, 7:48
The real surprise there was how bad Mclaren actually were already in 2013.
Their drop in form actually buried the issue whether the move was good one for Hamilton, with 2014 regulations change in mind. So the question for me, as Hamilton fan, and I would quess for many other as well, was solved already in 2013, because Mercedes proved they can built a better car, and in 2014 both teams would have been using the Mercedes engine, but only the factory team would posses all the know-how.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
7th December 2024, 7:56
Toto was only favoring Williams at the time, so it’s not surprising that McLaren felt like they had to get another engine manufacturer.
Ideals (@ideals)
7th December 2024, 8:06
Also remember that in that time, engine manufacturers were still allowed to give non-equal engine(-modes) to customer teams, making the Mercedes engines different for each team that ran them.
Drg
7th December 2024, 12:37
Completely false I am afraid.
Article in GP+ in 2014 – it is worth finding.
All power modes were exactly the same and monitored in real time via the fia ECU.
The only variance that has ever occurred is because McLaren’s insistence on using a different oil sponsor and Mercedes unwilling to provide a seasons worth of engines at full power unless they accept a contract for additional engines outside of the allowance.
Ron playing politics made that into a game.
The FIA has always monitored each engine in real time to look for spurious power spikes.
It is how the eventually got Ferrari.
If customers did not want use higher modes in case of failure – that was on them.
Scary Terry (@hatebreeder)
7th December 2024, 9:50
The comment section of that poll is gold!
Drop Saudi
7th December 2024, 10:23
I found my comment, happy to report I was dead right ;)
Hotbottoms (@hotbottoms)
7th December 2024, 10:26
I think it’s an exaggeration to say that people believed his career was over. Even if the Mercedes deal hadn’t worked out, he probably could have switched to another team within a couple of years (excluding Red Bull).
However, it’s true that there was a lot of skepticism about whether Mercedes would turn out to be better than McLaren. I remember myself thinking that Hamilton probably should’ve stayed at McLaren. At the time, the conventional wisdom was that McLaren and Ferrari were the teams to beat in the long run—but it turns out they weren’t. In fact, Red Bull and Mercedes emerged as the dominant teams over the next decade.
McLaren’s rapid and shocking downfall from a championship-contending team to a midfield competitor was a big surprise for many people, myself included.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
7th December 2024, 13:12
Yes, if you think about it, mercedes and red bull proved to be consistently at a higher level than ferrari and mclaren; the thing is: until 2006 none of those teams were in f1, so ferrari and mclaren only really had to deal with williams before then.
Ferrari and mclaren, look at the case, barely won anything since that year.
Hotbottoms (@hotbottoms)
7th December 2024, 14:21
There was relevant competition besides Williams, especially during the 2000s, including teams like BMW, Renault, Toyota, and Honda. Some of them performed very well in specific seasons—for example, Renault won championships in 2005 and 2006, and Brawn (effectively Honda) claimed the championship in 2009. However, none of these teams consistently stayed at the top.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
7th December 2024, 11:04
I’m going to rehash some comments from back then and say that his move to Ferrari will be a disappointment for both parties.
SPArtacus
7th December 2024, 11:58
No one said his career was over. Some people thought he was making a mistake. That’s about as dramatic as this story gets.
The Mercedes won both a race and a pole in 2012 and were a frequent challenger for a top 5 quali. They were very fast, but had no tire life. An issue we’ve seen teams can fix. And they had Ross Brawn and massive investment after the 2010 season. I wasn’t shocked when they were clearly on the way to somewhere special in 2013.
SPArtacus
7th December 2024, 12:02
PS – There will always be taking heads and F1 writers looking to create a big headline with lots of views by making a bold prediction and as it’s well known, especially by the news industry which uses it in their business models, that the human brain is more likely to view headlines with bad news, it really doesn’t say that much people were saying “this is going to be a disaster.”
An Sionnach
7th December 2024, 12:31
Perhaps Schumacher should have stayed on, although if he’d done this in 2007 then perhaps he would never have come back? Was Brawn right about Schumacher’s contribution to the development of the Mercedes? The engine would probably have been the same. He’s got a great record, driving tricky Benettons to championship success and helping to make both Ferrari and Mercedes into winning teams. Brawn was there, too, and Byrne for some of it.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
7th December 2024, 13:16
I always thought schumacher should’ve stayed a few more years instead of leaving in 2006, and as things turned out I’m pretty sure he’d have won both 2007 and 2008, and then could’ve retired after, maybe after doing a 1996 with the 2009 car and realising he didn’t have much time any more to wait for the car to improve like he did back then.
BenHur
7th December 2024, 22:28
AFAIAK, such career was over after the Hungaroring 2007 quali. This included 9 podiums with 2 wins in 10 races so pretty goiod for a rookie.