3 uncanny similarities between Lewis Hamilton's move to Ferrari in 2024 with his move to Mercedes in 2012

Lewis Hamilton will be moving to Ferrari in 2025. The British driver is making this move after spending more than a decade at Mercedes. The driver has had a brilliant record with the German team, and when he announced that he was leaving, it shocked many in the F1 world.

The shock was also somewhat similar to the year 2012 when Lewis Hamilton announced that he was moving to Mercedes from McLaren. At that time too, some wild proclamations were made about the driver, with most of them not only proving to be wrong but being comically off the mark.

This time around, as Hamilton made the call to move to Ferrari, the critics did not line up the way they did previously. There are, however, some uncanny similarities between the driver's move to Ferrari for the 2025 season and his move to McLaren for the 2013 season. Let's take a look.

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#1 Four unsuccessful campaigns before he left the team

When Lewis Hamilton moved to Mercedes from McLaren in 2013, it was at the end of a period of four years without winning a title. He secured his first title in 2008 when he beat Felipe Massa in the season's last race. However, from 2009 onward, the car was not good enough, and from 2010-12, Sebastian Vettel clinched the title every time.

When we talk about Lewis Hamilton's move from Mercedes, it comes once again after four unsuccessful years. He last won the title in 2020. Since then, Hamilton has been unable to clinch another championship. He lost in the last race of the 2021 season, and from 2022 to 2024, the car has just not been good enough. He'll essentially leave the German team after four years that have been devoid of success.

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#2 He moved one year before a massive rule change

The second similarity between Lewis Hamilton moving teams in 2013 and 2025 has to do with the rules regarding the cars. He joined Mercedes just a year prior to the introduction of major regulation changes in F1. From 2013 to 2014, a lot of changes were made in the sport, which included a new V6 turbo hybrid power unit and completely different aerodynamic regulations.

Lewis Hamilton will be joining a new team in Ferrari in 2025, and once again it is just one year before F1 changes gears. There's going to be a change in the aerodynamic regulations, and there's going to be a change in the power units as well as we look at the 50% electric power units becoming a reality.

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#1 Lewis Hamilton announced his move when Red Bull was the reigning champion

Finally, when Hamilton last time announced his move from McLaren to Mercedes, Red Bull was the reigning world constructor champion, with its driver Sebastian Vettel reigning as the drivers' champion.

This season as well, in January when Hamilton announced that he was moving to Ferrari, Red Bull was the constructors' champion at the time while Max Verstappen was the drivers champion.

While Red Bull eventually lost the title in 2024, the time when the driver made the announcement, the Austrian team was the dominant force in the sport, and it will be interesting to see if that remains the same.

Conclusion

Of course, none of this means that Lewis Hamilton will go on to have the success at Ferrari that he had in Mercedes. It also doesn't mean that the driver will have a similar impact on the sport that he had 12 years ago.

It does, however, show how sometimes in a sport that can be so unpredictable, there are always patterns in how things happen. The way Hamilton has given his respective teams four years before he made the move is uncanny, but it might also be something that he's already thought about.