Hamilton to Ferrari confirmed: 2025 F1 contract – the facts

It was news that shook F1: Lewis Hamilton would be leaving Mercedes, having signed a “multi-year” contract to drive for Ferrari from 2025.

Hamilton, the most successful F1 driver in history, will race a final, 12th season with the team that powered him to six of his seven drivers’ titles, before next yearbleaving for F1’s oldest and most successful name in Scuderia Ferrari.

Whether he sees it as his best chance to win another title, or wants to emulate the aspirations of his hero Ayrton Senna who intended to end his career at Maranello, is yet to be revealed.

What’s clear is that it will be the end of an era – and the start of a new one in red. We run through all the information about this seismic F1 move below.

When will Lewis Hamilton join Ferrari?

Lewis Hamilton will officially join Ferrari in 2025 when his contract at Mercedes runs out. His first race should be at the 2025 Bahrain Grand Prix, the modern season-opener.

However it’s possible he could drive a Ferrari F1 car before then. In 2022 Fernando Alonso reached an agreement with former employer Alpine to drive for new team Aston Martin at the ’22 post-season test in Abu Dhabi – Hamilton could well do the same at the end of 2024.

Prior to that, Hamilton will compete in 2024 for Mercedes – his twelfth consecutive season at the team – with whom he has won six of his seven F1 drivers’ titles.

How long is Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari F1 contract?

Ferrari has announced its contract with Lewis Hamilton will be “multi-year”. The champion has emerged from a brace of two-year deals at Mercedes, but this new contract, if successful, could see him stay at Ferrari well into his forties. He will be 40 when it starts.

His prospective new team-mate Charles Leclerc recently also signed a “multi-year” contract extension at Ferrari, so it’s likely he would remain at the team with Hamilton for the duration of the Brit’s Scuderia stay.

Why is Lewis Hamilton leaving Mercedes?

Hamilton and Mercedes have enjoyed unprecedented success together, putting together one of F1’s greatest winning runs from the introduction of the hybrid engine era from 2014.

However, following the Abu Dhabi 2021 controversy which allowed Max Verstappen to claim the drivers’ title at the death, Hamilton and Mercedes simply haven’t been able to reach the same competitive heights.

Though largely reliable, the 2022 and ’23 Mercedes cars in the new ground-effect era have been largely off the pace, though Hamilton has collected a large number of podiums and almost took second off Red Bull‘s second driver Sergio Perez this year, despite the Mexican driving a far superior car.

Aside from one win for team-mate George Russell at Brazil in 2022, the only team able to seriously challenge the supremacy of Red Bull has been Ferrari, which has taken five wins across two seasons.

It could be that the Scuderia represents Hamilton’s best chances of securing a record eighth title.

Hamilton is likely to also see himself following the aspirations of his hero Ayrton Senna, who is widely thought to have desired a move to Ferrari to see out his career.

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc – will Ferrari’s new F1 line-up work together?

Since his Ferrari debut in 2019, the charismatic Charles Leclerc has established himself as No1 driver at Ferrari – Hamilton’s arrival is the first time this position will be properly challenged.

Though Sebastian Vettel was the nominal No1 when Leclerc first drove for the Scuderia, the young Monegasque plainly outpaced his four-time world champion team-mate from the off.

After a few near-misses, Leclerc took a famous pair of wins at Spa and Monza in 2019, the second coming controversially after he was supposed to give Leclerc a tow in qualifying but didn’t, claiming pole and the race victory for himself instead.

Ferrari was largely powerless to stop Leclerc, because he was quite simply the faster driver – to do so would have been limiting itself.

Will the same happen with Hamilton? Sainz has never looked to truly challenge the speed of Leclerc, but Hamilton could easily measure up to the tifosi favourite.

On the other hand, if Leclerc asserts his supremacy, what will happen to the Ferrari team atmosphere? And will Hamilton stick around?

Lewis Hamilton’s F1 record at Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton got off to a steady if spectacular start when getting his feet under the table as Michael Schumacher‘s replacement at Mercedes in 2013.

This was largely due to the car which, much like Mercedes today, was one of the faster best-of-rest cars behind the dominant Red Bull.

The Brit put in a masterclass though at the Hungaroring, one of his favourite circuits, to claim a debut Silver Arrows win before the floodgates opened in 2014.

Mercedes aced the new hybrid turbo era with its 2014 car, with Hamilton winning out in fierce battles with team-mate Nico Rosberg to claim the title that year and in ’15, before the German succeeded in 2016.

Hamilton then took another four consecutive titles – two in intense scraps with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.

Lewis Hamilton career stats at Mercedes 

Lewis Hamilton’s contract meetings with Ferrari

With both names holding such prestige and a winning history, it’s perhaps no surprise that Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari have been linked before. 

The seven-time world champion is personal friends with John Elkann, Ferrari’s Chairman, who has been set on luring the seven-time world champion for a long time,

But it was only in 2023 when rumours of a potential agreement ran rife ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix in May, leading to a press conference filled with speculation. Hamilton himself downplayed the rumours, assuring press that his future was with Mercedes. When Charles Leclerc was asked about what he’d look for in a future Ferrari team-mate, he began with “Hello Lewis…”

Did he know? Were negotiations ongoing all the way back then? It’s certainly possible. 

Ahead of his latest contract extension with Mercedes, which took a long to be announced but ensured Hamilton would remain in Brackley until at least 2025, Ferrari revealed that it had again tried to negotiate terms with Hamilton ahead of the 2024 campaign but had been unsuccessful. 

Nevertheless, it seems that after years of trying, the Scuderia has finally got its man.

Lewis Hamilton’s relationship with Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur

Hamilton’s move to Ferrari will complete a reunion 20 years in the making with current team boss Fred Vasseur, who helped the Briton get his first F1 chance back in 2007.

Racing for ART with Vasseur at the helm, Hamilton won back-to-back championships in both Formula 3 (2005) and GP2 (2006) before making a spectacular F1 debut for McLaren in F1.

The pair have remained extremely close ever since, with Vasseur being promoted into a senior role at Renault in 2016 before moving onto Sauber and now Ferrari.

“I talk to him at every GP, he raced for me 20 years ago and we are still close,” Vasseur told Italy’s Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper last season. “Clearly, if they [the media] see us together in the paddock, there’s a lot of fuss, but the relationship has remained.”

Can Lewis Hamilton win with Ferrari?

Though Ferrari has had its ups and downs performance wise across the previous two seasons, it has been the only team other than Red Bull to score multiple race wins.

Longtime Ferrari man Mattia Binotto, both as technical director and team boss, oversaw the team not once, but twice, overcome performance deficits to drag itself back onto a level playing field in 2017 and 2022.

Though he has now left Ferrari, many of Binotto’s designers will still be there, and Hamilton will likely view this as his best chance of taking on Red Bull.

Heading into 2025, and more pertinently 2026 when a sweeping new technical rules changes come, the Brit sees an opportunity to reassert his supremacy at the top of F1 pile with Ferrari after over a decade at Mercedes.