The F1® Insider: Hamilton's 10-year Mercedes milestone
Thursday, 30 March 2023
Lewis Hamilton dumping McLaren for Mercedes looked questionable when he arrived in Melbourne in 2013; a decade later, the seven-time world champion allowed himself a moment to reflect.
No matter whether you think Gwyneth Paltrow is an all-time acting great, someone whose movie hits you're happy to miss or straddle somewhere between those two extremes, you can't deny how one of her most popular cinematic moments has become part of the modern lexicon.
"It's a sliding doors moment" gets referenced in marketing spiels, re-tellings of history, even wedding speeches. And in career retrospectives, as Lewis Hamilton reflected on in the build-up to this year's FORMULA 1 ROLEX AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX 2023.
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'Sliding Doors' had been out for nearly a decade when Hamilton raced in F1® for the first time at Albert Park 16 years ago, a debut that somehow exceeded the considerable hype that preceded it. Passing two-time world champion and McLaren teammate Fernando Alonso at the first corner of his first race – and then finishing third 58 laps later – marked him as a star of the present, let alone the future. But were it not for one sliding doors moment six seasons later, his legacy would be very, very different.
Hamilton had won 21 Grands Prix, the 2008 world title and the respect of even the most cynical F1® fans in six seasons at McLaren, but the results he really craved had cratered. Still, it was jarring when he dropped the bombshell that he was off to Mercedes – winner of precisely one Grand Prix in its modern return to F1® – for the start of the 2013 season, which kicked off right here in Melbourne.
Ditching a team with title-winning pedigree for a big name, a bigger salary and with no proven record of success? Forget the train in 'Sliding Doors'; the Mercedes move looked to be one that left Hamilton's chances of winning stranded on a London Underground platform.
Since? Hamilton's career choice has proven to be a masterstroke, enduring, and one that changed the course of F1® history. Since 2013, Hamilton has won 82 Grands Prix – for context, Michael Schumacher (second on the all-time wins list) won 91 for his entire career – and six more world titles. McLaren, on the other hand, has won a solitary Grand Prix, by Daniel Ricciardo in 2021 at Monza, and arrives in Melbourne this weekend dead last in the 2023 constructors' championship.
Australia 2013 was the beginning of a beautiful partnership between Hamilton and Mercedes that – while not looking too rosy right now – has given him success beyond his wildest dreams.
Hamilton admits that his Mercedes decision was "of course" a risky one, but it was the chance to have his fingerprints all over a project fueled by hunger and funding that piqued his interest.
"I was excited to work with new people and enter a team that had struggled," he said.
"It was a feeling that I had, I wanted something new. I was excited by the plans I heard were being put in place … I went with what I felt in my gut and in my heart."
Hamilton can't help but get reflective when he sets eyes on the Melbourne Walk as he enters Albert Park each year – "that was really the first stepping stone to being where I am today", he's said of that memorable 2007 debut – and while he and Alonso have gone from being the sport's young stars to elder statesmen in the seasons since, he's still invigorated by what's to come. At 38, it remains to be seen if Hamilton can add a record-breaking eighth world title that he came oh so close to achieving at Abu Dhabi in 2021 (speaking of sliding doors moments …), but he's finding silver linings in the Silver Arrows' current cloud.
"We know we can get back to the front," he insists.
"We don't have a great car right now, but we're putting one foot in front of the other. We know we're not perfect and we can always be better … it's going to be the hardest task we've faced together to get back to where we want to be."
