Damon Hill on Hamilton leaving Mercedes: “Maybe he underestimated them”

We’ve all been thinking it. Having ended a two-and-a-half year dry spell by winning two of the last three races, might Lewis Hamilton be getting cold feet over his move from Mercedes to Ferrari in 2025?

The shock switch was announced in February when Ferrari looked best placed to take the fight to Red Bull - who’d won all but one race in 2023 - and Mercedes was still licking its wounds from a second straight uncompetitive season.

But the picture has changed rapidly over the last few months, with the Silver Arrows (together with McLaren) now challenging regularly at the front while the Italian outfit has gone back to its old habits of putting on the wrong tyres at the wrong time.

True, Carlos Sainz won the Australian Grand Prix in March and Charles Leclerc finally took the chequered flag at his home race in Monaco in May, but since then the team has largely fallen off the pace.

The background to all of this is that Ferrari’s rivals seem to have unlocked a tonne of potential by restructuring their team and hiring new personnel. Meanwhile the Scuderia lost its chassis technical director Enrico Cardile to Aston Martin last month, and rumour has it that aerodynamic wizard Adrian Newey might be joining him there. Eek.

So TG asked Damon Hill - world champion with Williams in 1996 and a driver who made some big leaps of faith of his own, joining lowly Arrows for 1997 and then Jordan a year later - how Hamilton might be feeling with just 10 races left with Mercedes.

“He's had such an incredible time with Mercedes, and at the time he made the decision [to leave], I think he'd quite understandably thought that Mercedes had reached the buffers,” said Hill. “But maybe he underestimated them, because they are making a comeback and they could well be competitive.”

F1 is set to welcome a new generation of cars when a revamped set of regulations and new engine formula come into force in 2026: the last time the sport went through an overhaul this big, Mercedes, um, went on an unbroken eight-year winning streak.

Anyway, the current rules will remain in place for one more season, and given we’ve already seen seven different drivers claim victory so far this year, the 2025 championship is shaping up to be unbelievably close.

“It would be sad if he moved to Ferrari and Ferrari weren’t competitive,” Hill added, “because it would mean that he will be denied that chance to get the eighth title which many people believe he should’ve had.”

Ah yes, Abu Dhabi 2021. Entering the season finale level on points with Max Verstappen, you’ll no doubt remember Hamilton was comfortably leading the race and on course for title #8 when a late safety car was controversially called in to allow one final lap of racing. On fresh tyres, Max pounced.

“I'm of the view that unfortunately you have to take the results as they stand,” Hill explained. “In any sport, the umpire’s decision is final, even if the umpire was wrong. So that's one of those anomalies, and unfortunate things that happen in sport.”

But rather than looking back and asking ‘what if?’, Hill reckons Hamilton’s Ferrari move will be a positive thing even if he doesn’t win another championship, comparing it to “Nigel Mansell going there” in 1989.

“I would love to see Lewis fighting for his eighth title, and it's going to be amazing seeing him in a Ferrari. It's going to be very exciting.

“I think that it will add such a lot to the sport, and it's an unwritten story. We don't know how it's going to turn out, but it's going to be fascinating.”

Damon Hill was talking to TG at the F1 Exhibition, which opens at the ExCel on Friday.