“They were like, ‘Career’s over’” - Lewis Hamilton on F1 pundits’ brutal verdict about his early career decision

Lewis Hamilton opened up on his career decision to move from McLaren to Mercedes, in 2012, which did not go down well with F1 pundits, who criticized his decision. The year 2012 was very interesting for the British driver, as he was at a crossroads in terms of his career. He was part of the Woking-based team and had won the title with them in 2008.

There was, however, a level of stagnation in his career as McLaren had been unable to sort things out completely. In 2012, even though the car was fast, it had a lot of reliability issues that crippled the drivers. Lewis Hamilton himself had not come close to winning a title since 2010 and was an outside contender going into the last race of the season.

Mercedes on the other hand, was a midfield team at this time. The team came into existence after the brand bought Brawn GP at the end of 2009. Since 2010, the team was still trying to put the pieces together and even though there was a win in 2012 for Nico Rosberg, it was still not a front-running team. Despite this, Lewis Hamilton took the call to join the team in 2013.

The decision was initially faced with a lot of question marks, but in 2014, when Mercedes arrived with the best package, Lewis Hamilton had his redemption. Talking about this on a recent episode of "Performance People" podcast, Hamilton recalled how many F1 pundits had called the move a career suicide at the time but quickly changed their opinion in 2014. He said (as quoted by "PlanetF1"):

"I was with a championship-winning team. I was with McLaren, which had such a great history. Obviously Mercedes used to own half of McLaren, and so it was partly their team, but then they broke away and bought their own team, and as they were trying to ramp up, they weren’t having a lot of success. I think they were the fifth or sixth-best team at the time, so they were often finishing out of the top 10, struggling to get into the top 10," Hamilton said.

“As a World Champion, people were like: ‘This is the worst decision you can make, this not a great team and your career is over.’ All the pundits, all the media outlets, all the fans, everyone was like: ‘Career’s over. And then it went well and everyone’s like: ‘Oh, it’s the best decision ever made.',” he added.

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Lewis Hamilton on looking for a new challenge

Talking about the thought process behind changing teams, Lewis Hamilton felt that he wanted a new challenge. At Mclaren, Hamilton talked about not being challenged enough, while Mercedes offered an opportunity for a completely different kind of approach. He said (via the aforementioned source):

"I think it was just really that I wanted a challenge at the time and I love taking risks. I always have. And also I never liked doing the same thing everyone expects of me, so that’s why I never did well at school," Hamilton said.

He added,

“I meditated on it, I prayed on it, trying to think of what I wanted to do and I just loved the challenge. I thought that, where I was, I didn’t feel like I was being challenged enough," he added.

Despite the critics and apprehensions around his move, Lewis Hamilton ended up winning six titles with Mercedes and becoming one of the most successful drivers in the sport.