Hamilton's long, sometimes uncomfortable farewell to Mercedes

This weekend's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will mark the end of the longest and most successful driver/team partnership in the history of Formula 1. After 12 years, 246 races, 84 victories (85 if he can pull off one last miracle) and six drivers' championships, Lewis Hamilton will leave Mercedes to join Ferrari in 2025.

For all the success Hamilton and Mercedes have achieved together, the partnership is ending on a slightly awkward note. Hamilton's decision last winter to leave Mercedes took the team by surprise and has resulted in a long -- and occasionally torturous - goodbye, in which Hamilton's ongoing struggles with the latest generation of F1 car have been laid bare.

Three races ago in Brazil, he expressed his desire for the season to end so that he can enjoy some precious family time over Christmas. At last weekend's race in Qatar he even considered parking his Mercedes when he was informed of a penalty for exceeding the pit lane speed limit during the race.

That's not to say everything has been bad in his swansong year. In July at Silverstone, Hamilton turned back the clock with an epic British Grand Prix victory, which also marked his first win since he lost the 2021 title in devastating fashion at Abu Dhabi. A follow-up victory came in Belgium (which will likely be his last with Mercedes), but only after teammate George Russell was disqualified for his car being underweight.

There will still be 24 days left on Hamilton's contract following Sunday's chequered flag in Abu Dhabi, during which Mercedes plans to give him a proper farewell to mark their historic partnership. When the goodbyes are complete, though, both driver and team will embark on new eras: Hamilton in Maranello and Mercedes by promoting promising 18-year-old rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli as the seven-time champion's replacement.

Fairytale endings are rare in Formula 1 -- even more so when they have been dragged out over a year -- but that shouldn't cloud all there is to celebrate about Hamilton's time at Mercedes.

"To be honest, I think we've all of us together, Lewis and the team, we've done a good job of dealing with that," Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said last weekend Qatar. "When he took the decision at the beginning of the season to go, we knew it was going to be a bumpy year ahead, and it's very normal.

"He knows he is going to go somewhere else, we know our future lies with Kimi, and then to go through the ups and downs, and still keep it together between us, I think that is something we have achieved.

"Now you see these very bad races. Clearly, he wears his heart on the sleeve. You express your emotions and that's absolutely allowed, it's OK.

"But nothing is going to take away 12 incredible years with eight constructors' and six drivers' championships. And that is what will be in the memory. After next Sunday, we're going to look back at this great period of time rather than a season of races that were particularly bad. We will stay with the good memories."

Why did Hamilton leave Mercedes?

News of Hamilton's decision shocked Mercedes and the broader F1 world. Wolff has since revealed that he learned of his driver's plans via Carlos Sainz Sr, whose son Hamilton will replace at Ferrari, two weeks before Hamilton told the Silver Arrows boss face to face.

Just six months earlier, Hamilton had signed what was billed as a two-year deal to stay at Mercedes until the end of 2025. Despite appearances, the contract was in fact a "one-plus-one," giving both Hamilton and Mercedes an opportunity to exit the deal after the 2024 season.

"Obviously in the summer, I re-signed and at that time, I saw my future at Mercedes," Hamilton said earlier this year. "But an opportunity came up in the new year and I decided to take it, it was the hardest decision I've ever had to make.

"I've been with Mercedes for about 26 years, they've supported me and we've had an absolutely incredible journey together. We've created history within the sport, and it is something I take a lot of pride in and I am very proud of what we've achieved, but ultimately I'm writing my story, and I felt like this would be the time to start a new chapter.

"I think for every driver growing up, watching history, watching Michael Schumacher in his prime [at Ferrari], probably all of us sit in our garage and see the screen pop up and you see the driver in the red cockpit and you wonder what it'd be like to be surrounded by it.

"You go to the Italian Grand Prix, we see the sea of red of Ferrari fans, and you can only stand in awe of that. It is a team that has not had huge success since Michael's days and since 2007 [when Kimi Räikkönen won its last drivers' title], and I saw it as a huge challenge.

"As a kid, I used to play [video games] as Michael in that car, so it is definitely a dream, and I am really, really excited about it."

While Mercedes had not planned for Hamilton to leave at the end of 2024, it had pushed to structure the deal as a one-plus-one. Speaking recently to ESPN about the process last summer, Wolff referenced Antonelli's future as a reason the team had wanted to leave options open.

"When two parties sign a contract, it means you find an agreement on how you see the future and what kind of options and opportunities you want to keep alive," he said. "I think signing a one-plus-one was allowing Lewis to keep his options open and you can see that one of the opportunities was for him to go to Ferrari, and that was his call. On the other side, for us to reflect, was what are we doing with Kimi and what was the long-term plan with Mercedes in terms of the drivers' decisions?"

As recently as 2023, Hamilton spoke to ESPN about the trust he had with Wolff ahead of signing his final Mercedes contract.

"If Toto was talking to someone he would tell me and vice-a-versa," he said at the time, making the point that he had never used talks with a rival team as leverage to improve his negotiating position. So, did Wolff feel like there was a breakdown in trust when Hamilton opened talks with Ferrari over the winter?

"I think you need to set a standard for yourself, and I think it was such a difficult situation for him," Wolff said. "Our team wasn't doing as good as we expected from ourselves and the opportunity came up quickly over the winter [for Lewis] and he probably didn't have enough time to say, 'How am I tackling this with Toto and Mercedes?'

"So, it's not something I hold a grudge about, at all. If we could replay it in a better way ... well, there is no better way because he was under pressure in the winter, but maybe we would have had more conversations with other drivers and these doors were closed a few weeks earlier. But we have moved on, there is zero bad feeling from our side and we are excited about Kimi coming into the car next year."

Ultimately, there was never going to be a perfect way for Hamilton to leave Mercedes and drive for another team. Wolff had pushed for the one-plus-one deal and that had left the door open for Hamilton to look elsewhere for 2025.

There was also a now-or-never element to Hamilton's Ferrari offer. He will be 40 years old when he makes his debut in red and it's likely it will take more than a single season for everything to fall into place for a title challenge. Hamilton is talented enough and fit enough to start one last successful chapter in his career, but the longer he delayed it, the more difficult it would be to get right.

What makes Hamilton's time at Mercedes so special?

Hamilton's career statistics speak for themselves. Although he narrowly missed out on a record-breaking eighth world title in 2021, his 105 wins (84 with Mercedes) and 104 pole positions (78 with Mercedes) mean he stands alone as the most successful driver in F1 history.

When he joined the factory Mercedes team from McLaren in 2013, he had one title and 21 wins to his name. It was clear he had the potential to be a multiple world champion (Hamilton narrowly missed out on the 2007 title), but that feat was only realised when Mercedes aced F1's 2014 regulation changes and provided him with a car that dominated the field.

His string of consecutive titles over the next seven years were only broken by teammate Nico Rosberg beating him to the championship in 2016 in one of the most bitterly fought intra-team battles in recent F1 history. To underline his dominance during that period, he won a remarkable 53.28% of the races between his first Mercedes title in 2014 and his sixth in 2020.

Critics of Hamilton often point to his dominant car as the sole reason for his success, but such arguments ignore the reality of the period. To consistently turn up each season and perform on the level he did, especially in 2017 and 2018 when Ferrari's car was on a similar level, required a quality that those who worked with him remain in awe of to this day.

Williams team principal James Vowles, who was Mercedes head of strategy during its title-winning years, says three things stood out to him during his time working alongside Hamilton.

"First and foremost, he reinvented himself every year," Vowles told ESPN. "He'd come back each year with just little things you saw: a diet change, a lifestyle change, a focus change, the-amount-of-hours-worked change. He would step up year on year.

"He was never happy with what he'd achieved the year before -- irrespective of the title that came out of it -- he always wanted more every step of the way. It's hard when you are at the absolute pinnacle of your career and the sport to keep reinventing yourself every year, but he did. That first and foremost is what is individual and special about him, in my experience.

play

1:51

Edmonson: Hamilton's downturn in form at Mercedes is inevitable

Laurence Edmondson assesses Lewis Hamilton's form ahead of his final race with Mercedes.

"The second is that there were just moments, still today I remember his qualifying lap in Singapore [2018], in which you look at it and there was nothing left on the table. It's rare that you get yourself into a situation where you have goosebumps and you are looking at the data and going, 'Wow! That's impressive!' That's the delivery he could do when it really mattered.

"And the final one is that when the pressure is on you get the best Lewis, not the worst Lewis. He just responds every time."

More than just a driver

When Hamilton has been asked to reflect on his time at Mercedes, he has consistently pointed to his activity away from the circuit as his greatest achievement. During his Mercedes career, Hamilton used his growing platform as an F1 superstar to highlight causes linked to social justice, the environment and his own sport's lack of diversity.

In July 2021, he pledged £20 million of his own money to create a new charity, Mission 44, which is committed to supporting people from underrepresented backgrounds in finding careers in engineering. He also worked with Mercedes to set up a separate initiative, Ignite, again with a focus on increasing diversity in a sport that has only ever had one Black driver in its 75-year history.

"I think the thing I am most proud of and what I leave behind -- I hope this is in a positive way -- is the work we have done with diversity and inclusion," Hamilton said over the Brazilian Grand Prix weekend. "That is something I am most proud of.

"From the first moment sitting down with Toto, him being openminded, the whole team being openminded, all team members going through diversity and inclusion training and actually creating that diversity in the team.

"We did Ignite and they really put their money where their mouth was and invested. We have a very diverse team now, which is something I am grateful to be a part of."

Winning always came with the risk of being transitory, as proven by Hamilton's past three seasons in F1, whereas his work off the track is set to have a lasting effect.

"I said to Toto, when I leave there is going to be no one in the room who has these difficult conversations with you, but I hope you will continue and he said he will," Hamilton added. "I will come by every now and then to make sure he does.

"Then, on the track, it's a show of resilience over the years and our continued pursuit of perfection. I love that journey with us, and these last few years it's not been spectacular in terms of performances, but there are a lot of great things we have done away from the track in particular."

One final goodbye

Hamilton's frustrations with performance at recent races have largely kept emotions at bay, but that doesn't mean they aren't bubbling away under the surface. Hamilton was tearful on the slowdown lap after his emotional win in Silverstone this year, and the final laps in Abu Dhabi are expected to elicit a similar response.

"It will be emotional," Wolff said in Qatar. "In a way it doesn't touch us yet because we arrive in the melee of everything and we are trying to do our best every session and every day, but the closer it gets, the more emotional it will be, particularly on Sunday in the last laps of the last race. I hope we can recover a little bit of performance from what we have seen this weekend."

Although a victorious send-off would be a fitting way to end his Mercedes career, Hamilton says he will be at peace with whatever the final race throws at him.

"I mean, I don't need closure," he said in Qatar. "For sure, I woke up this morning and Toto and I were texting. Of course, we want to finish high. All I want is that we give it our absolute all, which I know we will.

"For me, these last races aren't going to define anything for the future. It's not going to define our relationship or our paths. We've already done everything and more than we ever set out to do. It would be great if we could get a win again, but I mean, we will see."

Over 12 years of unprecedented success (and occasional heartache), both sides acknowledge an inseparable bond has formed. The strength of that bond will make it odd, perhaps even uncomfortable, when Hamilton lines up on next year's Australian Grand Prix grid as a rival, but it is unlikely to ever be broken.

"We've had 12 years full of emotions of great moments, difficult moments that we conquered," Wolff said. "Here we are, 12 years, the longest-ever driver and team relationship in this sport, his success very much dependent on Mercedes' success. We are linked: Lewis' legacy will be Mercedes' legacy and the other way around. I will cherish all of those moments we had."

Hamilton admits he toiled over his decision to leave the team, but ultimately found peace in the belief that his connection with the team will outlast his on-track career.

"It's what I've always said about Mercedes: it really, really is a family," he said. "I've always said that, and one of the hardest parts of the decision is obviously when you're at Mercedes, you're a part of the family forever. If you look at the past drivers, up until their 80s, until your deathbed, you're a part of the team and they include you and honour you for life. And that was always a worry in the decision that everything we built, that ends.

"In my mind, I don't think that's the case. I'll always be a part of Mercedes' history. In the future, I'll always be able to come back and see the museum and know that I was a part of the history of this brand.

"I think we've all worked so hard, we've been through so much together, it's hopefully not a burning of a bridge. I think the bridge is solidified and it will last the test of time."