Lewis Hamilton’s final F1 lap with Mercedes: A year of challenges, a decade of triumphs

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Atop the Mercedes hospitality unit at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, cooled by nearby fans working hard in the midday heat, Lewis Hamilton sat at a table with his race engineer, Pete Bennington, for some pre-race weekend planning.

It was a routine they’d been through plenty of times before — 245 times, in fact — but the 246th time carried a little more emotion. After 12 years, 84 race wins and six world championships, marking it the most successful driver-team partnership in F1 history, this was the last race weekend for Hamilton as a Mercedes driver.

Hamilton’s conversations with Bonnington, affectionately known as ‘Bono’ and someone Hamilton has likened to a brother, remained as professional as ever. They knew there was a job to do. But speaking a few hours later, the seven-time world champion admitted these chats involved an extra degree of emotion.

“You’re sitting there, and you’re realizing these are the last moments with the team, which is … it’s hard to describe the feeling,” Hamilton said. “It’s not the greatest, of course, but I think mostly I’m just really proud of what we’ve achieved.”

The ‘last dance’ for Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes has been ten months in the making. On Feb. 1, Hamilton announced he would move to Ferrari for 2025, securing the 39-year-old a last blast in F1’s iconic red cars to end his glittering career. Abu Dhabi was always going to be a significant grand prix.

But at the end of a taxing year on the track, filled with the highs of victory at Silverstone and Spa to the late-season lows, both Hamilton and Mercedes are committed to ending with a celebration.

“It’s a really beautiful journey you go on together,” Hamilton said. “And being that it was so long, the emotions run so deep.”

Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal, had an inkling of what was coming when Hamilton arrived at his Oxfordshire home for their pre-season catch-up.

Fred Vasseur, Ferrari’s F1 chief and a close friend of Wolff’s, hadn’t replied to a text asking if he was “taking our driver,” and the father of Carlos Sainz, who Hamilton would replace, had tipped off the Mercedes boss that something might be happening.

Looking back on Thursday, Hamilton admitted to it being “awkward” meeting with Wolff to break the news that their partnership would end. Only eight months earlier, they’d agreed on a contract extension that appeared to reaffirm their commitment, one Hamilton had previously envisaged lasting long beyond his time racing in F1 was over. Their joint work on campaigns to assist long overdue change concerning diversity and equality in F1 is a legacy that means more to Hamilton than his racing achievements.

It also made for a year he admitted that he “massively underestimated” from an emotional point of view. “It was straining on the relationship very early on; (it) took time for people to get past it,” Hamilton admitted. “And then just for my own self, it’s been a very emotional year for me. And I think I’ve not been at my best in handling and dealing with those emotions.”

Hamilton has always worn his heart on his sleeve, evidenced by the tears that flowed after ending his two-and-a-half-year win drought at Silverstone. The intimacy of his relationship with Mercedes permits a brutal honesty that has survived significant disappointments — like his 2016 title loss to teammate Nico Rosberg or, more controversially, what happened in Abu Dhabi three years ago when he missed out on a record eighth world title.

Wolff has always liked to prod at any open wounds, knowing that is often the only way to understand how to make a situation better. He felt that Hamilton and Mercedes had “done a good job” handling the emotions of this year.

“When he took the decision at the beginning of the season to go, we knew it could be a bumpy year ahead,” Wolff said in Qatar. “He knows he’s going to go somewhere else. We know our future lies with Kimi (Antonelli). To go through the ups and downs and still keep it together between us, that is something we have achieved.”

“I’m just slow.”

For these words to be uttered by a seven-time world champion might seem fanciful. But there was a degree of resignation as Hamilton digested a difficult Friday of practice for the Qatar Grand Prix, where he couldn’t feel the car giving him back the kind of performance he needed. It continued a season-long trend.

For much of the year, the Mercedes W15 car hadn’t gelled to his driving style or allowed him to extract the kind of pace that he’d needed, particularly over a single lap. Through 23 races this season, Hamilton trails George Russell 18-5 in their qualifying head-to-head and is 24 points behind in the drivers’ standings.

The day after Hamilton made that comment, when he’d qualified sixth in Qatar while Russell, almost half a second quicker, was P2, he was asked to expand on it. Did he really mean that he’s lost the edge? Is this a sign of the decline most elite drivers and sports stars encounter as they near their forties?

“I know I’ve still got it,” Hamilton said. “(It’s) just the car won’t go a bit faster. I definitely know I’ve got it still. It’s not a question in my mind. (I’m) looking forward to the end.”

Lewis Hamilton enters his final race with Mercedes seventh in the drivers’ championship. (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

It wasn’t the first time Hamilton had given such a bleak outlook. After the race in Brazil, where he’d lagged to 10th in rainy conditions while Russell had been in the mix for victory prior to the race flag, he admitted he “could happily go and take a holiday” instead of doing the final triple-header. In Las Vegas, when the W15 came alive in the cold and allowed Mercedes to sweep to a 1-2, Hamilton seemed a little downbeat that he’d not been the one to lead it home after qualifying down in P10 while Russell was on pole.

“These last races, maybe even the whole season, was clearly not what we expected,” Wolff said in Qatar. “That car is a handful to drive on its worst days.”

But how much of that has hurt Hamilton in a way that it has not for Russell? Wolff put part of it down to Hamilton’s driving style. “One of his strengths is how he’s always able to brake late and attack the corner, and the car can’t take it,” he said, adding that when the grip kicks in the slow-speed corners, the problem worsens. “Then if the car slides more and it lacks grip, that contributes to (him) probably suffering more than George.”

In Qatar, Vasseur said he was “not at all” concerned by the form of his incoming star signee. “Have a look on the 50 laps that he did in Vegas, starting P10 (and) finishing on the gearbox of Russell,” Vasseur said. “I’m not worried at all.”

The progress made by Ferrari this year, recovering from its mid-season slump to put up a late fight to McLaren for the constructors’ title, will also encourage Hamilton that he can rekindle more of his old form. He stressed on Thursday that while his focus remains on Mercedes for his final weekend, there was a natural excitement building about the next chapter.

“It really sparks motivation,” Hamilton said, “and it’s a dream scenario for any driver to have an opportunity like this. I don’t take that for granted.”

Whenever Hamilton hangs up his helmet and calls time on his enormously successful career, this period with Mercedes will be the lasting, most definitive part of his racing legacy.

When he decided in 2012 to make a shock move away from McLaren, then consistently one of F1’s leading teams, it was scoffed at as a mistake: a step into the midfield, away from the team that had brought Hamilton up to F1, and into the unknown.

It proved to be the right move at the right time. McLaren was about to start a decline from which it would not recover for nearly a decade, while Mercedes was on the verge of starting a record-breaking F1 dynasty of which Hamilton would be the centerpiece.

The move also allowed Hamilton to become himself. His evolution from a 27-year-old one-time champion into one of F1’s elder statesmen, on the cusp of his 40th birthday with seven world titles to his name with interests and a celebrity status stretching far beyond this paddock, has been impressive.

Mercedes’ British driver Lewis Hamilton sits on his car, posing for a group photo with his team ahead of the Abu Dhabi GP. (Andrej ISAKOVIC / AFP)

On the entrance to Mercedes’ garage for this weekend at the Yas Marina Circuit are two large pictures of Hamilton, one from Hungary 2013 — his first win for Mercedes — and the second from Silverstone this year, arguably the most emotional of his record 104 victories. Across it reads the message: “Every dream needs a team.”

Even the challenges of this year and the difficulty of a year-long goodbye will not diminish what Hamilton and Mercedes built together.

“Nothing is going to take away 12 incredible years with eight constructors’ and six drivers’ championships,” Wolff said. “That is what will be the memory, and after next Sunday, we’re going to look back on this great period of time rather than a season or races that were particularly bad.

“We will stay with the good memories.”

Good memories. Historic memories. So heavy in emotion that, when the checkered flag drops for Hamilton on Sunday night and he hoists himself out of a Mercedes F1 car for the final time, they will surely come flooding back.

Top photo: Chris Graythen/Getty Images, Clive Rose/Getty Images; Design: Meech Robinson/The Athletic