Earlier this year, the proclaimed superstar of Mercedes, Sir Lewis Hamilton, announced a sensational move to his dream team Ferrari for 2025 and beyond. Initially, the entire motorsport community was completely caught by surprise; the media went berserk while leading Formula 1 pundits couldn’t hide their excitement and nose-dived their way into the secrets of the broken partnership between Hamilton and Mercedes.
Was it the decline in Mercedes’ performances on the track? Was it Toto Wolff’s declining interest in Hamilton and the subsequently rising support for their future leader, George Russell? What really provoked Hamilton to break ties with a team he had traveled with for more than a decade?
‼️James Allison asked “how surprised were you when you heard that lewis wanted to leave the team?”
“..not massively…but i was aware of the nature of the contract we offered…” ‼️‼️‼️ pic.twitter.com/OM6W3UpDpr
— sim (@sim3744) June 19, 2024
Well, several conspiracy theories suggested that Hamilton has been anything but happy since he extended his contract with Mercedes and that the entire Mercedes crew was aware of it. Furthermore, the latest interview with Mercedes’ technical director, James Allison, has only further solidified the aforementioned theory.
During the latest episode of Formula 1’s Beyond the Grid, Allison openly confessed that Wolff and Co. shouldn’t be surprised by Hamilton’s move to Ferrari, especially after the kind of contract offer they had in place for the seven-time world champion.
James Allison drops a truth bomb on broken Mercedes-Lewis Hamilton tie
The leading Mercedes engineer admitted that Hamilton moving to Ferrari was anything but a surprise. Here’s what the 56-year-old has to say about the situation at the Brackley outfit.
“Not massively, I was surprised by the manner in which it happened; the timing of it. But, I was aware of the nature of the contract we had offered. And the nature of the contract we had offered permitted that to happen. So, if it then happened, we shouldn’t be surprised because that is explicitly a thing we were prepared to happen or else we wouldn’t have put it as an option in the contract. So, yeah, the precise timing and sequencing of when it happened, I think that caught everyone a bit on the hop.”
Overall, Mercedes has already begun moving on from its most successful driver by shifting its focus to the Briton’s potential successor, George Russell. Indeed, Russell is light years away from achieving Hamilton’s legacy. But, the question is, can he eventually achieve it? Or, is Wolff betting on the wrong driver to replicate Hamilton’s success story in Mercedes?
Sara Chavan