Lewis Hamilton will call time on an 11-year spell with Mercedes at the end of this season.
Former F1 team founder Gian Carlo Minardi has torn into Lewis Hamilton ahead of his switch to Ferrari in 2025. The Mercedes star is set to replace Carlos Sainz, whose sparkling recent form has directed criticism towards the Scuderia regarding their decision to ditch him.
Lewis Hamilton will be 40 years old by the time he first turns a wheel in anger for Ferrari. But with seven world titles under his belt – a total only the legendary Michael Schumacher can match – the Brit will bring significant pedigree to the Italian manufacturer.
Even so, Minardi is not convinced by the merits of the move, which has left Sainz scrambling to find a new seat for the 2025 season. And the 76-year-old believes Hamilton’s main benefit to Ferrari will not be his driving ability, but rather his capacity to bring talented Mercedes engineers with him.
“All my life I preferred to hire younger drivers,” Minardi told Corriere dello Sport. “The only thing Hamilton can do is bring in some valuable technicians.”
The Italian’s tirade against Lewis Hamilton continued by insisting that he is not among the six drivers capable of winning the Drivers’ Championship if they are given the right machinery.
Minardi continued: “It is not fair that Sainz is not recognised as having the same natural talent as [Charles] Leclerc, because he has innate talents. He has nothing to envy the best and is among the six drivers who can aspire to the World Championship with the right car, namely [Max] Verstappen, Leclerc, Sainz, [Lando] Norris, [Oscar] Piastri and [George] Russell.”
With only eight points on the board after three Grands Prix, this has been by far the worst start to a season of Hamilton’s long and illustrious F1 career. Although hopes of an elusive eighth world title were slim to begin with, they are now gone altogether as Verstappen is already 43 points ahead.
Lewis Hamilton will hope that his switch to Ferrari gives him a better chance of reaching the record-breaking number, and the early signs from Frederic Vasseur’s team this season have been positive.
Since the start of 2023, Ferrari star Sainz is the only driver other than the Red Bull pair of Verstappen and Sergio Perez to have won a Grand Prix – most recently doing so in Australia last time out.
Lewis Hamilton has more race victories (103) than any other driver in F1 history. However, having won a Grand Prix in every single season of his career up until 2022, the veteran has now gone more than two years without taking the chequered flag first.
