Formula One's Lewis Hamilton to join Ferrari from Mercedes

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Seven-time Formula One champion Sir Lewis Hamilton is to join Ferrari in time for the 2025 season, ditching the Mercedes team that has powered his record-breaking career.

The British driver’s surprise move will unite the global series’ most successful driver with the only team that has competed in every F1 season.

The Italian racing group said on Thursday that Hamilton would be joining in 2025 on a multiyear contract.

The move highlights the pulling power of Ferrari, as well as Mercedes’ struggle to provide Hamilton with a car that can compete with Red Bull Racing at the front of the grid.

Ferrari has lured arguably the best driver in F1 history: no one has notched up more than Hamilton’s 103 wins, 104 pole positions and 197 podiums.

Born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, Hamilton emerged as a go-karting champion. He began his car racing career in the 2001 season and went on to become a household name at McLaren Racing, where he won the first of his world titles in 2008.

Hamilton’s looming departure from Mercedes comes after two difficult seasons for the Brackley-based outfit, which is jointly owned by German Mercedes-Benz Group, team boss Toto Wolff and British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos.

“We accept Lewis’s decision to seek a fresh challenge, and our opportunities for the future are exciting to contemplate,” Wolff said. “But for now, we still have one season to go, and we are focused on going racing to deliver a strong 2024.”

Hamilton said that leaving Mercedes had been “one of the hardest decisions” he had had to make, and thanked Wolff for his “friendship and leadership”.

“I want to finish on a high together,” he said. “I am 100 per cent committed to deliver the best performance I can this season and making my last year with the Silver Arrows one to remember.”

The 39-year-old is tied on seven drivers’ titles with Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher, who won his championships with the “Scuderia” before ending his F1 career at Mercedes.

Hamilton has not won a grand prix since December 2021 — in Saudi Arabia. A week later he was was denied victory in Abu Dhabi in the season’s finale when the sport’s governing body incorrectly applied the rules. The decision cost him the title as well as an opportunity to pull ahead of Schumacher. Mercedes has since struggled to adapt to new technical car specifications and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen has won three titles in a row.

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Ferrari’s on-track struggles are well documented. The Maranello team has failed to top the constructors’ standings since 2008. It has not won the drivers’ championship since Finland’s Kimi Räikkönen beat Hamilton to the title in 2007.

In Hamilton, who has almost 44mn followers across social media platforms Instagram and X, Ferrari is signing a sportsman whose status transcends F1. His interests range from business and fashion to diversity and sustainability. He is a part-owner of the Denver Broncos National Football League franchise.

Hamilton, who was the first black driver in F1, spoke up when police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. He subsequently set up the Hamilton Commission in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineering to help give opportunities to black people in motorsport and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

However, he has also previously had to defend himself over criticism of his tax arrangements.