formula 1
Hamilton’s declaration of love in the year of separation
Formula 1 superstar Lewis Hamilton is driving his final season for the Mercedes team. photo
© Darko Bandic/AP/dpa
Lewis Hamilton will look twice this Formula 1 season: at his current team, but also at his future one. What dangers does this quite piquant situation pose?
He hadn’t even told his parents beforehand about the decision, which caused a huge uproar in the premier motorsport class. Hamilton said, among other things, that it was a childhood dream. Practically every driver who makes it to the racing team speaks something like this, which is the only one that has been there continuously since the start of the World Cup in 1950 and which still creates a worldwide fascination with the racetracks like no other team.
Like Schumacher, like Vettel, like Alonso – the red temptation
“There are many fairy tales about Ferrari and what it feels like to drive a red car. I can only confirm these stories,” Sebastian Vettel once said. He too succumbed to the myth, he also succumbed to the red temptation from Maranello. He, the four-time champion, also had no further World Cup success. Like the two-time champion Fernando Alonso before him.
Simply looking at the collection of titles since 1980 is not an advertisement for the racing team: just five driver titles in more than four decades. Four of them were taken by Michael Schumacher (2000 to 2004), the fifth and still last by Kimi Räikkönen (2007), when he benefited from the huge feud between the then McLaren drivers Hamilton and Alonso.
Hamilton would be the greatest in a title triumph with Ferrari
It is undisputed that Hamilton would rise above everything if he achieved the world championship miracle in a Ferrari and became the sole record holder with eight triumphs ahead of Michael Schumacher. How likely this is remains to be seen. How much the coming year will outshine this season is already clear in the paddock in the Sakhir desert.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari’s long-term hope, was asked what it would be like to drive in a team with Formula 1’s most successful driver. And Carlos Sainz, who has to vacate the Scuderia cockpit for Hamilton, was allowed to explain how he felt about it. “I would have done the same thing in his position,” said the 29-year-old Spaniard: “I have no bad feelings towards him.”
Nevertheless, the constellation harbors risks and dangers. Ultimately, Sainz has nothing left to lose, he is fighting for a contract with another team, in the best case even with another top team. And Hamilton’s stable rival George Russell could become the new strong man at Mercedes. With a remarkable hesitation, Hamilton declared that he believed he could do so. Russell will want to prove that on the track this year.
Hamilton: “I’m here to deliver”
Whether Hamilton and Russell in the Mercedes or Leclerc and Sainz in the Ferrari – they all have one goal in common: to stop Max Verstappen. The 26-year-old Dutchman, who has only won an opening race once in his already highly decorated career, wants title number four in a row. And then preferably number five and so on. Then against Hamilton in the Ferrari.
The Briton emphasized that he was looking forward to the new challenge with great joy, whose announcement of the change had driven the price of Ferrari shares to a record high on New York’s Wall Street. But he is still 100 percent a Mercedes driver, the 39-year-old stated before the start of his farewell tour in the German car manufacturer’s silver-black racing car. “I’m here to deliver,” added Hamilton: “I still love this team and I will always love it.”