"All the pundits, all the media outlets were like his career's over" - Lewis Hamilton looks back on his decision to move from McLaren to Mercedes

Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton has claimed that his decision to join Mercedes from McLaren at the beginning of the 2013 season remains an important moment of his career. The F1 legend spoke about the outcry he faced when he announced that he would be departing the British team, which gave him his first championship in 2008.

Hamilton replaced outgoing seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher at the German team and joined a relatively struggling team as compared to the Woking-based outfit. However, the Brit was justified in his decision as the Brackley-based outfit improved to P2 in the challenge after holding off Ferrari's late-season charge.

On the Performance People podcast, Lewis Hamilton spoke about the outrage regarding his decision, reflecting:

"I was with a championship-winning team, I was with McLaren which has had such a great history and obviously Mercedes used to own half of McLaren, so it was partly their team. But they broke away and bought their own team and as a trying to ramp up as they weren't having a lot of success.

"I think they were like the fifth or sixth best team at the time so they were finishing often out of the top 10 and as a world champion I think people were like this is the worst decision you can make this is not a great team. All the pundits and all the media outlets everyone was like his career's over and then it went well and everyone's like oh it's the best decision he ever made." (2:03)

After his highly successful 12-year tenure at Mercedes ends in 2024, Lewis Hamilton is poised to make another iconic move to Ferrari in 2025.

Charles Leclerc gives his take on Lewis Hamilton joining Ferrari

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc has stated that he is looking forward to racing alongside Lewis Hamilton. Speaking with Autosport, the Monegasque said:

"When you have a seven-time world champion joining the team, it's always good news. First, because it's super interesting and super motivating for me."

He called the move "super interesting" because he believes that he can "learn from one of the best-ever Formula 1 drivers" and "super motivating" because he can show what he is "capable of doing" against Lewis in the same car.

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc have had some incredible battles on the track such as Monza 2019 and Silverstone 2022 when they went wheel-to-wheel for race wins and podiums and have triumphed on both occasions.

The 26-year-old has been the 'poster boy' of Ferrari ever since he joined the team in 2019 and defeated former four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel in his first year.