The bombshell news, confirmed first by Mercedes and then in a one-line statement from Ferrari, came after a day of mounting speculation with the world awaiting news from Maranello and Brackley.

‘The time is right for me to take this step and I’m excited to be taking on a new challenge,’ said Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton of his move to Ferrari in 2025. (Photo: Amin Mohammad Jamali / Getty Images)

“Scuderia Ferrari is pleased to announce that Lewis Hamilton will be joining the team in 2025, on a multi-year contract,” Ferrari said.

“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,” said Hamilton in the Mercedes 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.”

Hamilton said he wanted to finish his time at Mercedes on a high and was “100% committed to delivering the best performance I can this season and making my last year with the Silver Arrows, one to remember”.

The 39-year-old Briton is set to replace Spanish driver Carlos Sainz at Ferrari alongside Charles Leclerc and gives the Italian team a world champion in one of their cars for the first time since Germany’s Sebastian Vettel left in 2020.

The biggest driver move since Hamilton left a winning McLaren for then-unproven Mercedes at the end of 2012 came as a surprise despite regular chatter that it could one day happen.

Ferrari is the oldest, most glamorous and successful team but without a driver’s title since 2007 and like Hamilton hungry to get back to the top. The Briton has not won a race since December 2021.

His seven crowns are matched only by German Michael Schumacher, who raced for Ferrari from 1996 to 2006 during a golden era at Maranello and made a comeback at Mercedes.

Many questions

Hamilton’s switch raised plenty of questions about why he had decided to leave, a month before the start of the season, but it extends his career into the sport’s new engine era in 2026 and keeps him firmly in the limelight.

Despite his loyalty to Mercedes, Hamilton has remained close to Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur after winning Formula Three and GP2 (now Formula Two) championships with the Frenchman’s ART team as a junior in 2005 and 2006.

He will leave Mercedes with a long list of records.

“In terms of a team-driver pairing, our relationship with Lewis has become the most successful the sport has seen, and that’s something we can look back on with pride,” said Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff.

“Lewis will always be an important part of Mercedes motorsport history.

However, we knew our partnership would come to a natural end at some point, and that day has now come. We accept Lewis’s decision to seek a fresh challenge, and our opportunities for the future are exciting to contemplate.”

Lewis Hamilton ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi at Yas Marina Circuit on 23 November 2023. (Photo: Michael Potts / BSR Agency / Getty Images)

Winner of a record 103 races and with 104 pole positions in a career that started in 2007, Hamilton has not had the car to challenge Red Bull and Max Verstappen in recent seasons.

The Briton was third overall last year while Mercedes were runners-up.

Hamilton will have a well-established and quick teammate in Leclerc, whose contract was renewed last week for several more seasons.

Mercedes must now start the search for a partner to Britain’s George Russell, with Sainz one possible candidate although the Spaniard has also been linked to Audi when Sauber become their works team in 2026.

Shook the sport

If the surprise news shook the sport on Thursday, coming only five months after the 39-year-old Briton signed a two-year extension with Mercedes, there was also logic to the switch.

Hamilton has long had a fascination with Ferrari, even if Mercedes have backed him from boyhood, and speculation about a potential dream-come-true move to Maranello has punctuated his career.

He has owned the Italian sportscars and, over the years, acknowledged the allure of the most historic and glamorous of marques.

“It’s definitely going to be crazy to think that I never drove for Ferrari,” he said in 2021. “Because for everyone that’s a dream position to be in.”

Mercedes has won only one race in the past two years, after eight successive constructors’ titles, whereas Ferrari was the only team to beat Red Bull last year.

Wolff recognised the attraction in 2019 when he spoke of conversations with his driver, who now has a record 103 wins, about a possible move.

“You have to simply acknowledge that probably it’s in every driver’s head to drive at Ferrari one day,” the Austrian told reporters then.

“It’s the most iconic, historic Formula One brand out there and I totally respect if a driver has the desire to drive at Ferrari.”

Until now, it had been felt that the bond with Mercedes was unbreakable, but Hamilton could not resist the allure of the only team to have competed in every season of the championship since 1950.

Ralf Schumacher, whose brother Michael won five of his seven titles in a golden era of Ferrari from 2000-2004, saw the appeal as the icing on the cake of a stellar career.

“I think Ferrari is one of the places to be in the history of Formula One,” he told Sky Sports television.

“Especially for a driver like Lewis that achieved almost everything and was very unlucky not to be eight-time world champion, to be honest.

“I think for him it is just the dot on the i to make it perfect.”

Damon Hill, the 1996 world champion, suspected Hamilton would have stayed at Mercedes if he thought there was a real chance of winning a record eighth title there.

“I think he’s got to the point where he’s probably heard the music coming out of Mercedes maybe a few too many seasons and started to think ‘well, I need to invigorate my final years in Formula One, what better way to do it than to drive for Ferrari’?”

“At least I’ve got a chance. If it goes wrong, at least I’ve tried.”

Former racer and Sky TV commentator Martin Brundle said Hamilton’s move was just what was needed to energise a championship in need of compelling storylines in an era of Red Bull dominance.

“He can win races with Ferrari. Can he win another championship? Tall order,” Brundle said. Reuters/DM