Official: Lewis Hamilton makes shock move to Ferrari on a multi-year contract

Lewis Hamilton will join Ferrari in 2025. We repeat: Lewis Hamilton is joining Ferrari in 2025. What. The. Actual. Heck.

It’s a move that’s been talked about for years - seen by some as the perfect swansong to the seven-time champ’s glittering F1 career - but Hamilton himself denied he was thinking about it only last May.

And in August he signed a new two-year deal with Mercedes that was meant to keep him with the Silver Arrows beyond his 40th birthday.

But it now seems as though that second year was only ever optional, leaving Lewis free to take Ferrari’s second seat alongside Charles Leclerc in less than 12 months’ time. Blimey!

“I have had an amazing 11 years with this team and I'm so proud of what we have achieved together," said Hamilton. "Mercedes has been part of my life since I was 13 years old. It's a place where I have grown up, so making the decision to leave was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make. But the time is right for me to take this step and I'm excited to be taking on a new challenge.

"I will be forever grateful for the incredible support of my Mercedes family, especially Toto for his friendship and leadership and I want to finish on a high together. I am 100 per cent committed to delivering the best performance I can this season and making my last year with the Silver Arrows, one to remember.”

His boss, team principal Toto Wolff, said: “In terms of a team-driver pairing, our relationship with Lewis has become the most successful the sport has seen, and that’s something we can look back on with pride; Lewis will always be an important part of Mercedes motorsport history.

"However, we knew our partnership would come to a natural end at some point, and that day has now come. We accept Lewis’s decision to seek a fresh challenge, and our opportunities for the future are exciting to contemplate. But for now, we still have one season to go, and we are focused on going racing to deliver a strong 2024.”

And Lewis's new boss? A simple one line statement from Maranello: "Scuderia Ferrari is pleased to announce that Lewis Hamilton will be joining the team in 2025, on a multi-year contract."

This is massive. Like, massively massive. And for Hamilton it raises the prospect of trying to win a world championship with the most prestigious team on the grid - the only one to have featured in every season since 1950 - something his childhood hero Ayrton Senna never got the chance to do.

It'll be an almighty challenge: no driver has won the driver's title with Ferrari since Kimi Raikkonen in 2007, and the team has repeatedly under-delivered since then with reliability problems and bad strategy calls adding to its good-but-never-quite-good-enough performance.

Lewis will pair up with Leclerc, who extended his contract with Ferrari “for several more seasons” only last week. Unfortunately that means Carlos Sainz will have to make way for Hamilton at the end of 2024.

Naturally, the biggest driver move since, well, since Lewis left McLaren for Mercedes at the end of 2012, the switch will have massive implications for the rest of the grid.

The most immediate question is... who replaces Hamilton at Mercedes? Toto Wolff is a known admirer of Leclerc but he's tied down, and Lando Norris signed a new contract with McLaren less than a week ago: he'll race there until the end of 2026 at least.

One to watch out for is Alex Albon: he has quietly impressed since rejoining the grid with Williams and clearly merits a more competitive car than the team can give him. But is he ready for another shot in a top team?

Other options for Mercedes would be the ousted Sainz - a two-time race winner, let's not forget - and could Daniel Riccarido have an outside chance if his path to a Red Bull return is blocked?

We daren't even mention the F word... Fernando Alonso, anyone?

Woah. Just woah. We’re gonna need some time to process this one…