Last Updated on January 1 2025, 1:20 pm

Lewis Hamilton is statically the greatest Formula One driver ever, yet debates rage amongst long standing fans of the sport as to whether he really is the greatest of all time. Memories of Graham Hill clinching becoming the only driver to claim motorsports triple crown are often cited as making the deceased British racing legend the GOAT having become the only person to win the Indy500, the Monaco Grand Prix and the Le Mans 24 hours race.

Currently only Fernando Alonso has a small chance of replicating this feat having two F1 titles to his name along with two victories in the Le Mans 24 hour event in 2018-19. Six of Lewis Hamilton’s championship years were with his beloved Mercedes team, who during that era became the most dominant team Formula One has ever seen racking up eight consecutive constructors’ titles between 2014-2021.

There are other drivers in the pantheon of F1 history who also make valid claims to be the greatest of all time, in a time when they were not closeted by the F1 teams exclusive demands and allowed to partake in a range of other perceived ‘dangerous’ racing series.

 

 

 

Hamilton’s move to Ferrari will be difficult

Now Lewis is a Ferrari man of today and all attention will turn to his first outing in a previous years car in Fiorano, expected to be as early as sometime in the next week. Hamilton may find this transition from the motorsports valley in England to Maranello in Italy the toughest thing he has attempted during his time in Formula One. 

Lewis does not speak any foreign languages and the recent crop of Ferrari drivers have been fluent in the team’s native tongue. This in itself will be a real challenge for the seven times world champion as will other aspects of his life which are flamboyant and beyond the regular rhythm of the workers lives in industrial Northern Italy.

Hamilton chose to spend his final weekend with the Mercedes family, who have sponsored him since around the age of 12 years, by wearing a flamboyant range of clothing which appeared to express some kind of transition from the silver arrows to the Maranello red of Ferrari.

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Rosberg calls out Lewis “very strange and inappropriate” behaviour

Lewis’ old team mate and 2016 F1 drivers’ champion has called out the attitude of his former rival as “very strange and inappropriate” as from Thursday to Sunday the outfits Hamilton wore to the track transitioned from his Mercedes colours to that of Ferrari. Nico Rosberg who went head to head with Hamilton across four hard fought seasons believes Lewis has cast away his heritage in a flippant display of his wardrobe.

“I found this decision very strange and inappropriate. It’s a shame. It’s his day, so it’s okay. They [Hamilton and Mercedes] celebrate and appreciate it; they still have a good relationship. But it’s a small point that I think is a shame,” said the 2016 F1 champ.

Rosberg who now is a Sky Sports pundit was part of one of F1’s greatest rivalries in modern times. He went head to head with Hamilton between 2014-16 in a bitter duel for supremacy and but for a power pit failure in Abu Dhabi in 2014, his record against his former team mate could have been 2&1.

The final year which saw the pair together in the silver arrows team was the most bitter of all. Toto Wolff was regularly rewriting his rules of engagement for his drivers, such that the once notations predicting specific on track scenarios became a tome worthy of the author Tolstoy. When Rosberg finally trumped the much decorated Hamilton, he announced his shock retirement from the sport in a matter of days after lifting the drivers trophy.

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Hamilton admits: “I’m just not fast anymore”

And it is Rosberg who has the greatest insights into Hamilton’s winning psyche, as it was he who worked out how to dismantle the air of invincibility Lewis had cleverly crafted around his image and on track performances.

Rosberg has been critical of Lewis’ move to Ferrari, questioning whether to go up against young gun Charles Leclerc in his own back yard is wise for Hamilton in the twilight of his career. The Ferrari protege and Monegasque driver is known to be one of the quickest in single lap pace and his statistics bear this out.

During his career at Ferrari, Charles has racked up an incredible 26 pole positions despite only claiming victory in ten Grand Prix. This is four poles more than Fernando Alonso and fourteen short of Max Verstappen who has been racking them up weeks in and out during his four ayer campaign as the world champion driver.

In a moment of public self reflection, Hamilton in fact admitted in 2024, “I’m just not fast anymore.” This was patently obvious during Lewis’ final weekend with Mercedes in Abu Dhabi where he qualified just eighteenth in the final Grand Prix of the season. Rosberg believes Hamilton’s once great strength of one lap pace is now his achilles heel as he was beaten in qualifying by his team mate, 19-5 last season.

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Hamilton “very worried”

“The problem with our sport is that if you don’t qualify high up, you really struggle, even though he still seems to be at his very, very best in race pace – we’ve seen over and over again, his racing pace is just still insanely strong. But when you qualify poorly almost all of the time, and he says himself he’s just not quick enough in qualifying, then that’s something that was weighing on his shoulders so much during the end of the year,” Rosberg says.

Hamilton showed glimpses of his old racing form in Las Vegas in 2024, when having qualified in a lowly tenth place he carved his way through the field in an attempt to catch his team mate and claim the win. Whilst Hamilton ultimately finished second he continued to tell in George Russell right to the chequered flag.

Rosberg concludes with the fact that, “Ferrari hired him to be on a level with Leclerc and fight for Drivers’ Championship. So I think he will be very worried about that, and we can only hope that he finds back to his good old self with a reset at Ferrari and is, once again, the brilliant driver we know.”

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Russell crushes his world champion team mate

Whilst Hamilton’s headline numbers are reasonable which measure him against his team mate George Russel over the past three seasons, there will be concerns at Ferrari over whether Lewis can deliver the results that his predecessor Carlos Sainz was capable of. And given Hamilton’s recruitment was an executive decision made by the Ferrari president John Elkann, and not the F1 team boss Fred Vasseur, tricky times are ahead should Lewis not deliver.

Russell smashed Hamilton in their head to head when it comes to laps led in a race. The Mercedes young pretender racked up some 243 laps led since 2022, while Hamilton had a paltry 90. George has won five races to Lewis one in the same time frame and has an average qualifying and finishing positions ahead of the seven times world champion.

Whether Hamilton can raise himself one last time as did Samson and bring down the F1 house looks increasingly unlikely for the once King of the F1 hill. How long Ferrari retain his services should he be bested regularly by Leclerc, is anyone’s guess. But for sure it won’t be due to fear of a huge payoff that the pair part company, should Lewis be harming the competitiveness of the most famous team in Formula One.

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Cadillac F1 engine delayed to next decade – if ever

The all new 11th entry to the Formula One grid was finally accepted by the sports owners Liberty Media after initially being rejected by the F1 commercial rights holder. Originally branded as Andretti F1, the team and the proposal was restructured and rebranded to broker a deal to prevent the US Justice department launching a full investigation into anti competitive practices.

The NFL was hit last summer with a fine just short of $5bn dollars for breaches in US anti-trust laws, following a decade of legal action. Clearly this was something the F1 owners decided was not in their interest and capitulated from their original rejection of an 11th F1 competitor subject to a number of personnel deckchairs being shuffled on deck.

Cadillac is the de factor Andretti team entry, rebranded and with Michael Andretti completely out of the picture given his outspoken criticism of senior paddock folk had appeared to have become the stumbling block. This was evident at the 2024 Miami Grand Prix when Liberty Media’s CEO Greg Maffei, broke into a conversation between Mario Andretti and Stefano Domenicali telling the motor racing legend he would ensure Michael will never be allowed to enter the sport… READ MORE