Why Lewis Hamilton will be more motivated than ever at Ferrari

It didn’t take long to see what was on the horizon. The first corner of his first F1 race saw him sweep the reigning double world champion and team-mate Fernando Alonso under the rug with an audacious move around the outside in Melbourne.

He finished on the podium on his debut and went on an unprecedented run of nine podiums in his first nine F1 races including victories at races seven and eight. There’s no two ways about it, Lewis Hamilton should have been world champion in his debut season. But for one crucial error in China, it would have been so.

A year later confirmed his stardom, as he righted the wrong to become F1 world champion at the second time of asking. In the years that followed, Hamilton's career has been dominated by success. Even when McLaren's form dwindled, he was winning races year in, year out. But a chance at a second championship aluded him.

His head was turned by the mutual genius of Ross Brawn and Niki Lauda, who managed to convince an unsettled Hamilton to leave his childhood team and join Mercedes for 2013. The story of the following eight seasons will go down in legend. Never has a team and driver combination been so dominant.

Yet hidden away in the background of all that success remained an inkling that never truly went away. Throughout his career in F1, almost since day one, Hamilton had made no secret of his ambition to one day race for Ferrari. Conversely, at various moments throughout the past 15 years, Ferrari has often made no secret of its desire to sign him. But Hamilton’s ties to Mercedes, with all the success the partnership had yielded, were too strong.

Mercedes’ struggles opened the door to Hamilton exit

It would take something monumental to pull the seven-time world champion away from his spiritual home. And it all began one day in Abu Dhabi, at the final race of the 2021 F1 season. What began to unravel then, when Lewis Hamilton almost walked away from the sport entirely, has never quite been recovered.

A calamitous drop in form for Mercedes has no doubt opened the door for Hamilton to consider a change – the 2022 season marked the first-ever winless campaign for Hamilton, something he repeated in 2023. And if he ever was to leave the Silver Arrows, there was only ever going to be one destination.

It’s important to note that Hamilton still has one year left to run with Mercedes and the team has been making positive noises about its latest challenger, the W15. But even that has not been enough to convince Hamilton to stay. He’s 39 now, after all, and surely coming into the twilight of his record-shattering career, and that must've played a part in his decision to follow his heart.

What’s the thinking behind Hamilton to Ferrari?

So what can we expect from Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari? What does he himself expect? The parallels between his move to Mercedes all those years ago and his impending switch to Ferrari are stark. Both take place one season before a major engine regulation change and in both cases, Hamilton moves from one seemingly rudderless team to another.

Neither Mercedes nor Ferrari have been anywhere close to the championship fight since 2021. Ferrari hasn’t been a genuine contender since 2018 and have won neither drivers’ nor constructors’ titles since 2007 and 2008 respectively.

Comparisons will of course be drawn with the arrival of Michael Schumacher in 1996. A reigning two-time world champion who came to Ferrari with the promise of bringing glory back to Maranello. The dynamic at Ferrari is very different now to what it was then, and Schumacher was still in the early stages of his career, Hamilton is very much nearing the end of his.

First to consider is the relationship Hamilton has with Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur. The Frenchman was in charge at ART when Hamilton drove for the team and won the GP2 title in 2006. Before that, he founded the ASM team, which took Hamilton to the Formula 3 Euro Series championship in 2005.

Next, are the implications of the 2026 regulation change. Ferrari is one of eight engine manufacturers preparing for the new era of sustainable fuels and there must be something in the team’s preparations that has piqued Hamilton’s interest.

This decision, aside from everything else – the romance, the emotional implications – simply has to be motivated by success. We know just how important that eighth world title has become for Hamilton. He believes it was taken from him in 2021 and will not stop pushing until he has righted that wrong in his head. He would not be moving to Ferrari unless he was convinced it could offer him a better chance of winning than Mercedes.

There is of course one variable that remains out of Hamilton’s control, and that is Red Bull. The team that has swept the past two world championships without breaking a sweat. It’s a tall order for any team, Ferrari included, to overcome the deficit they currently face.

Hamilton will be even more motivated at Ferrari

One thing’s for sure. The Lewis Hamilton we see arrive in the paddock, dressed in red, will be a very different driver to the one we’ve seen at Mercedes for the past two seasons. He’ll be 40 by then, and for anyone who has been involved in F1 for such a long time, with the success he has achieved, undertaking a brand-new start with a new team and a fresh challenge will require motivation on a whole new level. That will of course be helped by the fact he’ll be lining up on the grid as a Ferrari driver, but if he’s going to do this, you can bet he’s going to throw everything at it.

A win for Ferrari is different to any other team. For Lewis Hamilton to say he won a race, let alone a championship, for Ferrari will undoubtedly rank among his greatest achievements, to follow in the footsteps of Ascari, Fangio, Surtees, Lauda, Villeneuve, Mansell, Prost, Schumacher and the many other names that have topped the podium for Maranello. Forget the material for a moment, there is a heritage and legacy at Ferrari that is burned deep into the soul of every motorsport fan.

Not to be overlooked, is the fact he'll be teaming up with Ferrari’s golden boy in Charles Leclerc. A man who himself has just signed a new multi-year contract. Leclerc has been Ferrari’s number one driver since he overthrew Sebastian Vettel in 2019 and endeared himself to the tifosi with a memorable win at the Italian Grand Prix, but he has never quite managed to fulfil his own potential as the team around him often threatened to implode.

Hamilton has already shown one rising star, George Russell, exactly what it means to go shoulder to shoulder with one of the greatest of all time, you can be sure he’ll look to do the same to Leclerc in 2025.

At the end of it all. It will come down to whether Ferrari can finally build a car to challenge for the title. Hamilton will bring a level of focus the team hasn’t seen since Schumacher departed at the end of 2006, and his insight into car development, along with everything he’s learned along the way with Mercedes will certainly help to maximise the potential of his new team.

Can Lewis Hamilton win the world championship with Ferrari? Who’s to say he won’t do it in 2024 with Mercedes. But certainly, with the slate due to be wiped clean once again in 2026, there is every chance he will be in a position to do just that.

Ultimately, Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari will be the same driver he was when he burst onto the scene in 2007. He’ll be blindingly quick, but perhaps more motivated than he ever was at Mercedes. For all the success he had with the Silver Arrows, the opportunity to start afresh at Ferrari, with the inevitable backing of the tifosi, will be exactly the fillip he needs to keep racing at the very top of his game.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.