The intense emotional farewell at Mercedes for Lewis Hamilton felt a lot like he was retiring from F1 altogether. But such has been the anticipation around his switch from Brackley to Maranello that people cannot fathom not seeing Hamilton race for the Silver Arrows. That said, former Haas boss Guenther Steiner was nonchalant about it.
On the Red Flags podcast, Steiner stated that the seven-time world champion himself decided to end his Mercedes association and jump ship to Ferrari before the 2024 season even began. So, he would have known about the emotional weight of his exit from the Brackley team.
“I mean he decided to go there. You don’t need to get emotional about that. He got all emotional about that, but there was no need for that. He knew what he was doing when he signed the contract 10 months ago,” he said.
Steiner acknowledged that Hamilton and Mercedes had a “fantastic partnership” for over a decade that broke records and etched their names in F1 history. Still, either of the parties owed a lot to each other for making their time together as successful as it has become.
“A stint that rewrote the record books” ✍️
We can all relate to Toto’s smile as Lewis got his final donuts in a Mercedes #F1 #AbuDhabiGP pic.twitter.com/4lHWNZGgWl
— Formula 1 (@F1) December 9, 2024
After Hamilton joined the team in 2013, Mercedes went on a juggernaut of race wins and championships, particularly after the turbo-hybrid regulations took effect in 2014. The #44 driver’s elite skills were instrumental in winning 84 races during his 12 years at Brackley while clinching six of his seven world championships.
It is difficult to imagine whether Hamilton or Mercedes would have achieved this abundant success, had either of them decided against their association back in 2012-13. Back then, the Briton was in a dilemma: to join the Silver Arrows or stay put at McLaren, which was a top team.
Steiner feels Hamilton was at the right place at the right time
After considerable deliberation and negotiations with the late Niki Lauda, Hamilton chose to switch from McLaren to Mercedes — a move that many believed was a bad decision by the 2008 world champion. But all that criticism aged rather badly when the #44 driver dominated the sport with Mercedes for eight long years.
Steiner also expressed his feelings about Hamilton’s only other career switch 12 years ago. “I think at that time, he wanted to get into a real works team. McLaren was a customer team. They don’t have their own engine,” he said.
The American-Italian stated how Hamilton made the “right pick” by moving to Mercedes, as McLaren slipped back in the pecking order after 2013. He was at the right place at the right time, per the former Haas boss. The seven-time world champion would want this notion to be correct once again about his switch to Ferrari.
While the Italian team has been showing good promise of becoming a championship-winning team again, McLaren have surprisingly returned to the top of the field, clinching the 2024 constructors’ title. The Woking outfit still use the Mercedes engine as a customer team, so they have certainly outperformed the Silver Arrows by a mile in recent years.
This underperformance by Mercedes was one of the primary reasons for Hamilton to switch teams. Now, McLaren would have been a great homecoming story for him. But with their two young drivers along with a set team structure and goals, the Briton felt that treading the waters at the storied team from Maranello, who covet his services, would make sense.
