Although almost a month has passed since the news broke out that Lewis Hamilton would be moving to Ferrari in 2025, the Briton continues to make headlines. Many experts have raised concerns about how Mercedes are at risk of leaking secrets to the Prancing Horse if they involve Hamilton in their development process for the rest of this year. Amidst such concerns, former Ferrari driver Ivan Capelli has made an interesting suggestion to Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff.
Capelli said (as quoted by gazzetta.it), “If I were at Mercedes from a certain point of the year onwards, I would ban him (Lewis Hamilton) from taking his mobile phone into the garage for safety. The closer the farewell gets, the less Mercedes will give him information”.
However, not involving Hamilton in the development process could also turn out to be problematic for Mercedes. With seven world championships to his name, Hamilton is arguably one of the best F1 drivers who can help the Silver Arrows get out of their recent slump.
Although Mercedes have 26-year-old George Russell as their lead driver for the future, they will also need the expertise of Hamilton to develop the car for this season and next year. Hence, it would be very difficult to keep Hamilton on the sidelines for the rest of 2024 even if it means that he takes some secrets with him to Ferrari next year.
Is Lewis Hamilton already leaking secrets to Ferrari?
During pre-season testing last week, Lewis Hamilton took some pictures of Mercedes’ W15. It barely took any time for these pictures to go viral. Fans took to social media and joked that the Briton was sending these images to Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur for further inspection.
Even though both Hamilton and Toto Wolff have made it clear that they will continue to remain professional in their last year together, there are still concerns that Mercedes are at risk of leaking vital secrets to Ferrari. F1 expert Martin Brundle also recently shared his thoughts about the same.
The 64-year-old expert revealed on one of the recent episodes of the Sky Sports F1 podcast how Mercedes may stop inviting Hamilton to meetings this year to prevent the 39-year-old from getting a know-how about “what’s going on with the development of the car”.
Since Hamilton has confirmed that he would be leaving Mercedes, in some ways it is better that he is leaving in 2025 and not a year later. Since F1 are introducing new regulations from the 2026 season onwards, there would have been a greater risk of Mercedes sharing secrets, had the Briton stayed with them a year longer.
