Lewis Hamilton confirms Mercedes departure for Ferrari
- Lewis Hamilton has confirmed he is leaving Mercedes
- Ferrari confirmed that Hamilton will join “on a multi-year contract” in 2025
- The move comes ahead of the 2024 season for the seven-time world champion
Published on Feb 01, 2024 at 4:28 PM (UTC+4)
by Amelia Jean Hershman-Jones
Last updated on May 14, 2025 at 4:25 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Alessandro Renesis
British Formula One star, Lewis Hamilton, has confirmed he is leaving Mercedes at the end of the upcoming season.
Meanwhile, Ferrari announced Hamilton would be joining the team on a “multi-year contract” in 2025.
“I have had an amazing 11 years with this team and I’m so proud of what we have achieved together,” he said in a statement about leaving Mercedes.
“Mercedes has been part of my life since I was 13 years old.
“It’s a place where I have grown up, so making the decision to leave was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make.
“But the time is right for me to take this step and I’m excited to be taking on a new challenge.”
Meanwhile, Ferrari released a statement reading: “Scuderia Ferrari is pleased to announce that Lewis Hamilton will be joining the team in 2025, on a multi-year contract.”
The move comes ahead of the 2024 season for the seven-time world champion.
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Hamilton signed a two-year deal with Mercedes in the summer of 2023, however a clause in his contract allowed him to leave the team by “activating a release option”.
Despite signing a mega $127 million, two-year contract to stay, Hamilton’s name had already been linked to Ferrari for 2024.
The Monaco resident will replace Carlos Sainz, whose contract expires this year, at the Prancing Horse.
Meanwhile, the other Ferrari seat is occupied by Charles Leclerc, who recently agreed a new long-term deal.
Hamilton told ESPN in May last year – before signing his current Mercedes contract – that it would be untruthful to claim he “never thought about ending my career anywhere else”.
“I thought about and watched the Ferrari drivers on the screens at the track and of course you wonder what it would be like to be in red,” he said.
However, the 39-year-old concluded that interview by saying that Mercedes is “home” and he was happy at the team.
After winning his first F1 title with McLaren in 2008, Hamilton joined Mercedes in 2014 and won six more world championships.
Hamilton and Michael Schumacher are level pegging on seven championship titles each, while the British driver has the most Grand Prix victories in the history of the sport with 103 wins.
Mercedes team boss, Toto Wolff, said the link-up had been the most successful partnership between a driver and team ever in the sport.
“However, we knew our partnership would come to a natural end at some point, and that day has now come,” he said.
“We accept Lewis’s decision to seek a fresh challenge, and our opportunities for the future are exciting to contemplate.
“But for now, we still have one season to go, and we are focused on going racing to deliver a strong 2024.”
Former world champion, Damon Hill, told Sky Sports News that Hamilton was likely to still be smarting from the end of the 2021 season.
He lost the lead in the last moments of the final race after a restart that many considered to be controversial.
Hamilton has not won a race since 2021.
The new season for F1 begins with the Bahrain Grand Prix on 28 February.
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All Supercar Blondie contributors undergo editorial review and fact-checking to ensure accuracy and authority in automotive journalism. After gaining her BA Hons in French and English at the University of Nottingham, Amelia embarked on a vocational diploma from the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ). This led to numerous opportunities, from interning at Vogue to being on the small team that launched Women’s Health magazine in the UK, which was named the PPA Consumer magazine of the year for three years running. As Health, Beauty and Fitness editor, Amelia personally received a Johnson & Johnson Award and was shortlisted for both PPA and BSME titles. Since then, Amelia has created content for numerous titles and brands, including the Telegraph, 111 Skin, Waitrose, Red magazine, Stylist, and Elle, as well as being Head of Content at Vitality and Editor in Chief at INLondon magazine. “My superpower is translating technical jargon about the mechanical workings of a supercar into a relatable story you’ll want to share with your friends after you’ve read it.” After joining the SB Media family as a senior journalist in September of 2023, Amelia’s role has evolved to see her heading up the SEO output of the editorial team. From researching the most ‘Google-able’ key terms to producing evergreen content - it’s been a time of hard work, growth, and success for the editorial team and the Supercar Blondie website. “I like to think of myself as a ‘method journalist’. In other words: I live and breathe whatever I am writing about. When writing about fitness, I trained as a personal trainer, and as a beauty editor, I completed an ‘expert’ in scent diploma with the Fragrance Foundation. “During my tenure at Supercar Blondie, however, I did something I never thought possible: I passed my driving test at the age of 36. One day I’d love to train as a mechanic to better understand what happens under the hood, too. “My sweet spot is providing readers with a ‘takeaway’ (read: something new they didn’t know before) after reading every one of my stories. While I don’t claim to be an expert in the automotive world, I know the experts and bodies in the field to rely on to provide our readers with an informative and thought-provoking story every time they visit the site.”
