Lewis Hamilton started his F1 journey back in 2007 when he made his debut for McLaren. At the Woking-based outfit, he well and truly announced his arrival in F1. He almost won the World Championship in his debut season, missing out on it by just a point.
The very next year, he won the World Championship, his first and last with McLaren. Hamilton ended up staying at the Surrey-based outfit until the 2012 season after which he announced that he will move to Mercedes. Today, we know how historic that move was back in the day, but most people doubted it in 2013. Mercedes were a new team, who was still finding its feet in the sport whereas McLaren seemed like an outfit that was destined to win races on a regular basis.
Regardless, Hamilton’s move shocked a lot of people. To show his gratitude to the McLaren staff and mechanics who worked with him since 2007, Hamilton organized an extravagant party for them. Unfortunately for the Stevenage-born driver, they chose to attend his teammate Jenson Button’s party instead.
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Lewis Hamilton booked a 16-lane bowling alley in Suzuka for McLaren’s mechanics
According to reports in UK, the McLaren mechanics chose to attend whatever Button organized, instead of attending Hamilton’s farewell. The latter actually made a lot of effort to throw an extravagant party before leaving for Brackley.
Hamilton booked a 16-lane bowling alley in Suzuka for himself and his team members to have fun in. He wanted to do this to pay tributes to all his mechanics before he left.
Hamilton’s move to Mercedes was historic
Hamilton joined Mercedes in 2013 and his first season was fairly quiet. However, with the start of the turbo-hybrid era, the Briton kickstarted an era of dominance in the sport along with the team that will forever be etched in the history books.
Hamilton won six World Titles in eight years with Mercedes, losing out to only Nico Rosberg and Max Verstappen on two separate occasions. Between 2014 and 2021, Mercedes wone very single Constructors’ World Championship. It was only in 2022 when they started showing signs of weakness.
Mercedes failed to cope with the regulation changes as well as Red Bull or Ferrari, but they hope to bounce back from a disappointing P3 finish, in 2023.
