The 2024 Formula 1 season was eventful both on and off track, but the news that sent shock waves throughout the sport's community has to be Lewis Hamilton's announcement that he was leaving Mercedes to join Ferrari.
After years of speculation, Hamilton finally announced that he would be leaving Mercedes and finally making his way to Maranello to don the Red racing suit in 2025.
Despite being powered by Mercedes for the duration of his F1 career that started with McLaren Mercedes in 2007, Hamilton will soon have a taste of Ferrari power as he enters the twilight of his F1 career.
Sebastian Vettel previously claimed that everyone is a Ferrari fan, the German himself leaving Red Bull to join Ferrari back in 2015 and remaining with them until the end of the 2020 season before switching to Aston Martin in 2021.
And it turned out that Hamilton is no exception, and having been a collector of Ferrari road cars, the seven-time F1 champion will now be driving their single-seaters from 2025.
Driving for Ferrari is on the bucket list of any F1 driver, and Hamilton ticked that off in what was a logical move, especially after the barren years he endured with Mercedes between 2022 and 2024.
The rot set in when Lewis lost out on an eighth F1 title in 2021 as Max Verstappen beat him that year after a controversial Safety Car period in that season's final race in Abu Dhabi.
And while that defeat was a hard one for Hamilton to fathom—he famously went off social media for months—the Briton was hoping to have another crack at an eighth title in 2022.
But that was not to be, as Mercedes dropped the ball massively with their 2022 F1 car designed around the new ground effect aero rules, turning out to be a bouncing disaster.
The eight-time F1 constructors' champions failed to improve after that as they struggled to get their heads around the current regulations, with their cars being inconsistent at best, the team not knowing why they were fast at some instants, slow at many others.
The 2024 F1 season was even more painful for Hamilton as he contested it knowing he would be leaving Mercedes, who started favoring teammate George Russell, who beat him, albeit by a small margin, in the championship. The younger Briton, though, has been the better qualifier for Mercedes and comprehensively.
There was also the cringe moment when Mercedes boss Toto Wolff claimed he was happy Hamilton left rather than having to fire him once his shelf time expired, which proved the relationship was totally broken.
Hamilton finished the season seventh in the standings despite winning in Silverstone and Spa and is now getting ready to make his Ferrari debut, whose exact date has not been decided yet.
Honorable mention: Adrian Newey to Aston Martin
While Hamilton's move to Ferrari was GrandPrix247's News of the Year, we cannot ignore the seismic effect of Newey's decision to leave Red Bull Racing and join Aston Martin as a tech boss and shareholder.
Red Bull has been embroiled in controversy even before the start of the 2024 F1 season due to Horner's sexting scandal.
The team was destabilized by their boss' scandal and went through a civil war with Max Verstappen, his father Jos, and Helmut Marko all involved.
That seemed to have put off Newey, who soon announced he would be leaving the team, and after months of speculation that he was off to join Hamilton at Ferrari to create a super team similar to the one created by Jean Todt in the late nineties where he assembled the dream team: Michael Schumacher, tech boss Ross Brawn, and top designer Rory Byrne.
However, Newey decided against moving to Italy and stayed in the UK, taking on a new challenge with Aston Martin, whose Chairman, Lawrence Stroll, broke the bank to secure the legendary designer's services, even agreeing to make him a shareholder, something Ferrari would've never agreed to do.
History showed us that any F1 team that had Newey won championships: Williams, McLaren, and Red Bull Racing.
Now it remains to be seen how or if the design guru manages to transform Aston Martin into a winning force and how he gets along with Lawrence Stroll, who is infamously hard to work with especially when it comes to his son, Lance, who may prove to be a hindering factor in Newey's plans to develop the team.
While Hamilton is a legend in the driving department, Newey is a legend in the design department and thus his honorable mention in this award.
Latest News
Loading
