After the long winter break in Formula 1, it has almost become a tradition for Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton to meet in person for a chat. It was during this meeting that the Englishman revealed his move to Ferrari, catching Mercedes by surprise, which had to quickly address the situation internally.
It was an opportunity for the two to manage what happened in the previous season, review developments during the winter, and discuss goals and ambitions for the new championship, with all its challenges.
These annual meetings were often the perfect opportunity to spend a lot of time together, better understand each other’s mentality, and fine-tune everything for the upcoming season. Speaking previously about the value of these encounters, Toto Wolff had said, “I think the end of the season represents a good time when you can put everything on the table, some of the frustrations and undiscussed topics, and reflect on them, analyze them, and agree or find out what actually happened.”
The annual meeting was scheduled for this Wednesday at Wolff’s home in Oxford, while Hamilton had visited Brackley the day before to have his seat fitting for his 2024 car.
From Wolff’s perspective, there were all the prerequisites to think that this would be the occasion to put an end to the team’s difficulties over the last two seasons and prepare for what was hoped to be a renewed competitive charge with the new W15, a car that had given positive indications in the simulator, according to the Team Principal.
However, things didn’t go as expected, and, on the contrary, the focus of the meeting was the bombshell announcement from Hamilton. He explained that he wanted to activate the exit clause in his contract and had signed with Ferrari for 2025.
Almost simultaneously, Marc Hynes, a longtime confidant of Hamilton recently returning to a more active role in managing the seven-time champion, arrived at the Mercedes factory in Brackley to deliver a formal letter to the team, formally informing them of the situation.
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Lewis Hamilton’s departure was now official, and despite the shock, they began to handle the news before the public confirmation on Thursday evening. Although it had been suggested that January 31 could be significant as the last day for Hamilton to activate his options, it’s clear that it wasn’t the case.
Instead, events unfolded only this week because it seems Hamilton wanted to inform Wolff face-to-face at the earliest opportunity, rather than through a phone call or via lawyers.
Let’s not forget that when Nico Rosberg told Wolff he would retire after winning the 2016 championship, he couldn’t do it in person and did so with a phone call to the airport after they had spent hours together returning to Europe.
Clarifying things before the start of the season made a lot of sense for Lewis Hamilton too, who wanted to get the news out as soon as possible. If he had kept the agreement with Ferrari hidden, knowing that rumors would inevitably spread, he would have risked turning it into a media frenzy that could have distracted both him and Mercedes during the season, as the deal had already been finalized.
While rumors linking Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari had been circulating for some time, previously without success, in this case, the new partnership would have surprised Mercedes as well.
When the first rumors of Hamilton’s departure emerged, it was inevitable to think that perhaps things had been brewing for a while, and Mercedes was trying to organize everything to make its driver happy.
The recent announcements of contract extensions for Wolff and Technical Director James Allison were perhaps a signal that the team was eager to make Hamilton understand there was long-term stability at the managerial level.
However, it is believed that Wolff and Allison’s developments had nothing to do with Hamilton, especially since there had been no indication of his possible departure at that time. Moreover, there was no behind-the-scenes issue that triggered Hamilton’s desire to leave, nor any concern about the progress of the W15 project, which offered some encouraging signs from the simulator.
Instead, as Hamilton confirmed in the Mercedes press release, it was simply the right time for a change and to take on a new challenge. With Wolff and Mercedes top management aware of the importance of Hamilton’s decision, it was logical for the team to move quickly to sort things out for the team and the public.
Wolff called a meeting at the Brackley facility for 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, to which all team members were invited to attend, to explain what was happening.
And it was here, in a video conference because he was in Milan for a Mercedes engineering team meeting with Pirelli, that Wolff announced that Hamilton would leave the team at the end of the season.
By this point, the news had already practically leaked before both teams made their announcements around 8:00 p.m. on Thursday evening: first, the farewell to Mercedes, then the signing with Ferrari.
Lewis Hamilton’s move to the Prancing Horse is one of the biggest shock stories in F1 for years and has kicked off one of the most interesting and frenetic news days in recent times.
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