This is the off-season. Names of Formula 1 drivers or teams don’t generally trend on social media at this time of the year. Yet a certain Lewis Hamilton popped up on mobile phones or computer screens last Thursday evening. Interestingly, the other F1 name doing the rounds was Ferrari and not Mercedes.
The trend became viral and the virus eventually broke the internet late on Thursday or early Friday, depending on which part of the world you’re in, when it was announced that the Briton would make a sensational move to join the Italian marque in 2025.
There is still one whole season to go for 2025. Hamilton has not won a championship the last three years. Scuderia Ferrari has gone 15 years without winning a title. Yet the coming together of the two names is already being touted as the biggest ever move in the history of Formula 1.
But with valid reason.
The 39-year-old is the most successful driver history in the sport. Ferrari, on the other hand, is the most famous, affluent and eminent outfit in F1 – the only team that has raced in every season of the sport since it commenced in 1950.
It is the dream of every racing driver to race for Ferrari at some point in their life. Every F1 great, barring Ayrton Senna, has driven for the legendary team that was started by the great Enzo Ferrari. With Hamilton achieving unmatched success in the sport, questions always popped of a possible move to Maranello.
But the opportunity never came. Following Kimi Raikkonen’s title in 2007, Ferrari brought in two-time world champion Fernando Alonso to carry forward the legacy of seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher, who came to be known as the ‘Red Baron’ for winning five titles with Ferrari.
While the Spaniard came close in 2010 and 2012, he fell short to Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel. With Vettel winning four consecutive world titles, Ferrari decided to go back to the German-Italian pairing like Schumacher and Ferrari as they hired the services of Vettel to reclaim their glory days.
Vettel too came close in 2017 and 2018 but the Hamilton-Mercedes combine proved too good as the Briton won six titles with the German marque – the most by a driver-team pair.
But Hamilton joining Ferrari came as a surprise.
Hamilton will be 40 by the time he joins Ferrari. Though we have had exceptions in Schumacher and Alonso who raced or are still racing well into their 40s, it is normally an age by when drivers retire. Also, Hamilton had signed a two-year deal in August 2023 that would have kept him at Mercedes till the end of 2025.
In addition, the norm nowadays is to go young with the biggest examples being Vettel and Max Verstappen at Red Bull. While Vettel is the youngest to win the world championship at 23, the reigning world champion was the youngest race winner (at 18) when he took the top step of the podium at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix.
Seeing young drivers succeed and perform even better than experienced hands, other teams following the Red Bull route.
Even Ferrari.
The Italian outfit, the most traditional and conservative of all F1 teams, shook the F1 world when they hired Charles Leclerc in 2019 when he was only 22, shedding the custom of bringing in drivers with not just experience but also titles under their belt.
But by bringing in Hamilton they have more than reversed that order.
For Hamilton, who has been powered by a Mercedes engine all his life, it is a massive change. But having broken all important driver records and achieved whatever there is to, the seven-time world champion knew this was probably going to be his last challenge left in the sport.
“I feel incredibly fortunate, after achieving things with Mercedes that I could only have dreamed of as a kid, that I now have the chance to fulfil another childhood dream. Driving in Ferrari red,” said Hamilton.
Ferrari have now gone 16 years without a drivers’ title and 15 without a constructors’. If Hamilton can lead them back to the top of the charts, it will be the most sensational story F1 has seen in all these years, something that could even eclipse the dream like partnership between Schumacher and Ferrari.
Also, the tables have turned on Mercedes after the regulations were changed in 2022 with Red Bull becoming the dominant force in F1. After finishing in the top 2 of the standings for eight successive years, Hamilton finished sixth in 2022 and third last year in a Mercedes that looks no match for the Red Bull. Verstappen too has replaced Hamilton as the face of the series, having won the last three world titles.
It remains to be seen whether any team can upturn Red Bull in 2024 or 2025. But 2026 is when the game changes, again. 2026 will once again see engine regulations change which means one thing – change of the existing order. And both Hamilton and Ferrari are betting on that.
It is exactly what Hamilton had done a decade back when he made the switch from McLaren, who were at the top, to a new team Mercedes that was yet to make its mark. But 2014 changed everything, handing the Hamilton-Mercedes partnership six titles together.
But will Hamilton be able to change Ferrari’s fortune? Only one way to find out when Hamilton switches his gear from silver to red come 2025.