Seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton will leave Mercedes at the end of this year to join Ferrari on a multi-year deal, the Italian team confirmed on Thursday.
Mercedes said Hamilton activated a release clause in the two-year contract extension he signed last year. Ferrari then confirmed that the 39-year-old British driver will join in 2025.
Hamilton joined Mercedes from McLaren in 2013 and won six of his seven world titles at the Silver Arrows on his way to a record 103 race wins.
“I have had an amazing 11 years with this team and I’m so proud of what we have achieved together. Mercedes has been part of my life since I was 13 years old,” Hamilton said in a team statement. "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.”
After signing the new contract last summer, Hamilton spoke of having “unfinished business” at the team and of having faith that Mercedes could get back to the front.
Hamilton won six titles with Mercedes in seven years from 2014-20 and lost the 2021 championship to Red Bull's Max Verstappen on the final lap of the last race. He has not won a race since 2021 and remains stuck on a record 103 wins.
Five years ago, Hamilton was asked if he could ever be tempted to drive for Ferrari.
“If there is a point in my life where I decide I want a change, that potentially could be an option,” he said at the time.
In late 2019, Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport reported Hamilton met with Ferrari chairman John Elkann twice that year and they discussed Hamilton potentially replacing then-driver Sebastian Vettel at Ferrari.
Hamilton was subsequently asked at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that year if he met Elkann.
“Naturally, everything that happens behind closed doors is always private with whoever it is you end up sitting with,” Hamilton said. “For many years, I’ve never ever sat down and considered other options, because we (Mercedes) have been driving straight ahead, on the same path. We’re still on that path, and there’s very little that’s going to shift it.”
Ferrari has not won the drivers' championship since Kimi Raikkonen in 2007 when he beat Hamilton — who was in his debut season — by one point.
Hamilton joined Mercedes in 2013 from McLaren in what was also a surprise move at the time.
After dominating to 2020, Hamilton and Mercedes have been frustrated in the past two seasons. Mercedes won only one race in 2022 — through George Russell — when the car suffered from a bouncing effect, known in F1 as porpoising. The team admitted getting the design wrong.
Hamilton finished third overall last season but a mammoth 341 points behind Verstappen and secured only six podium finishes.
While Leclerc’s form improved with three podiums in the last four races of 2023, Hamilton finished the last three races in eighth, seventh, and ninth, respectively.
Preseason F1 testing begins on Feb. 21 in Bahrain. Bahrain also hosts the first of a record 24 races on March 2, when Verstappen starts his bid for a fourth straight world championship.
