Paris (AFP) – The Ferrari team announced that Briton Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion in Formula One, has joined its ranks to compete in the 2025 season, according to what the Italian team announced Thursday, a few moments after Mercedes announced the departure of its legend at the end of the 2024 season. .
Published on: 01/02/2024 – 20:52 Last updated: 01/02/2024 – 20:50
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“Scuderia Ferrari is pleased to announce that Lewis Hamilton will join the team in 2025, under a multi-year contract,” Ferrari’s statement said.
As for the Mercedes team, it said in a statement: “Lewis activated the transfer option in the contract announced last August, and thus this season will be his last with the Silver Arrows team.”
For his part, Hamilton said, “I have spent 11 wonderful years with this team and I am very proud of what we have achieved together. Mercedes has been a part of my life since I was 13 years old. It is where I grew up, so making this decision was one of the most difficult of my life.” “Absolutely.”
He added, “But the time is right for me to take this step, and I am excited to take on a new challenge.”
The BBC reported that Mercedes staff were invited to a meeting with team director Toto Wolff at the company’s headquarters in Britain on Thursday to inform them of Hamilton’s decision to leave at the end of the 2024 season.
Reports indicate that Hamilton will replace Spaniard Carlos Sainz Jr., whose contract expires at the end of 2024, and thus he will partner with Charles Leclerc from Monaco.
Hamilton won the last of his seven titles in 2020, only to return and lose his crown the following year to Dutch Red Bull driver Max Verstappen in the last leg of the final round of the World Championship at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the Yas Marina Circuit, in a way that sparked a lot of controversy regarding the decisions that were taken at the time.
Since then, Verstappen has dominated the championship, winning the title in the last three years, while Hamilton finished sixth and third respectively in the final drivers’ standings in 2022 and 2023.
Hamilton shares the record for the number of titles in the first category with German legend Michael Schumacher, as he won his first title with McLaren (2008) and the other six with Mercedes (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020). He also holds the record for the number of victories in major prizes (103). However, he has not achieved any wins since the end of the 2021 season.
Ferrari, who previously admitted to holding talks with Hamilton in 2019 about the possibility of him joining in the future, had previously refused to comment on reports that spoke of the Briton’s transfer to its ranks.
Hamilton never hid his anger over the 2021 incident in Abu Dhabi, considering that he was robbed of an eighth title that would have put him ahead of Ferrari legend Schumacher.
He also expressed, on an inappropriate occasion, his dissatisfaction with the performance of the Mercedes car in the last two years, which may have been the motivation for his move to Ferrari in the hope of renewing his quest to win a record eighth title.
Ferrari’s performance has not been much better in recent seasons, despite significant improvement during the latter stages of last season.
Ferrari finished last season in third place in the constructors’ standings behind Mercedes and Red Bull.
© 2024 AFP
2024-02-01 19:52:06
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