They also went crazy on the stock market. The spectacular signing of record world champion Lewis Hamilton has driven Ferrari’s share price to a record high. Postings on the topic on social media worldwide reached astronomical numbers and the international media outdid each other with superlatives. In short: The Brit’s move to the Italian racing team from the 2025 season is, beyond Formula 1, one of the biggest sporting coups of all time. That can be said without exaggeration.
The question remains as to why. Has Hamilton lost faith that Mercedes can give him a winning car with which he can win his eighth world title? Or is it pure romance? Every racing driver in the world dreams of Ferrari, the greatest myth in racing. Or is it all the money that the Italians will pay the British? He is rumored to be worth 80 million euros per annum.
The fact is that the change comes as a surprise. Not even Mercedes and its team boss Toto Wolff were prepared for Hamilton to dare to leave after eleven years and six world championship titles together. It was only in August of last year that Hamilton extended his contract with Mercedes by two years. As it now turns out, he had apparently had an exit clause anchored in the paper, which he was now making use of.
For Mercedes, the news is initially a setback. The team is in a sporting crisis and has lost touch with Red Bull, which has dominated Formula 1 with super driver Max Verstappen for three years. The last victory so far came in 2022 for the second driver, George Russell. Hamilton’s last victory in the Silver Arrow was in December 2021. The team has been struggling with problems since then. There is a lot to be said for the fact that Hamilton no longer believed that Mercedes could make a comeback. How the 2024 season goes remains to be seen.
Hamilton’s motivation for the change is probably quite banal: the superstar wants to take the last chance to get into a Ferrari cockpit in the autumn of his career. He will be 40 years old when he takes to the slopes for the Italians for the first time. For him it means the opportunity to write one of the most powerful stories in Formula 1: after the mythical successes of Michael Schumacher, to be the driver who leads Ferrari back to the racing Olympus (only the Finnish Kimi Räikkönen achieved this once with a lot Luck 2007) and became the sole record holder in Formula 1 with eight titles. It doesn’t get any bigger than that at the moment.
But as it is with big or megalomaniacal dreams: they don’t always come true. Hamilton and Ferrari are taking a big risk. Ferrari has to rely on a driver for a season, Carlos Sainz, who has to leave at the end of the season. That’s not necessarily a motivational boost. Every duel between Ferrari and Mercedes on the racetrack can become a political issue.
It is just as uncertain whether Hamilton will prevail against Charles Leclerc from 2025. Leclerc is only 26 years old and also pretty fast. And whether Ferrari will build a World Cup-ready car in 2026 is also unclear. They basically haven’t been able to do that since the blessed Schumacher days. Only when they cheated once did they get to Mercedes and Red Bull. Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel, who also came to Ferrari as world champions and were supposed to lead the Italians to brilliant heights, know a thing or two about it. They both failed.
