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Lewis Hamilton will not be a Mercedes driver after this year. A partnership that began in 2013 and has seen a ton of success will be coming to an end after a two-year barren run.
Hamilton joined the team in 2013 in a surprise move from McLaren. The Brit had won a title with McLaren in 2008 and it was a massive surprise to see him lose confidence and move to Mercedes, a team that had primarily been a midfield contender at the time. His faith in the German team paid off when Mercedes rolled out its contender for 2014.
Hence began a journey of success that lasted eight years. During this time, Hamilton won six world titles while Mercedes won eight. But like everything else in life, all good things have to come to an end and Mercrdes' dominant era came to an end in 2021.
With the new regulations, Mercedes has slipped back even further compared to Red Bull, and Lewis Hamilton has yet to win a race since 2021. In what should be considered a major shock to the system, Hamilton has now left Mercedes for Ferrari in what is considered by many as a major sign of dissatisfaction.
The star driver is, however, not the only one who has left the team as he's just one of the many part of this talent exodus. One by one, there are quite a few that are leaving the team. So is Mercedes under Toto Wolff a ship that is starting to sink? Let's dissect.
Why Mercedes might just be a sinking ship after Lewis Hamilton's departure
Exodus of talent
Since 2014, one can just go through the list of some of the more accomplished team members who have left Mercedes. The most recent one was Mike Elliot, who left the team last season after a decade of association. Before him, early 2023 saw James Vowles leave Mercedes for the team principal role at Williams.
This has been an ongoing trend and one can see plenty of the top Mercedes personnel now heading teams like McLaren, Aston Martin, and others. At some point, this exodus is going to hurt the team in the long run and it does appear that the loss is starting to hurt the team now.
Two below-par seasons
In F1, the decline does not happen instantly. It's a slow-burning process whose inception can years later be pinpointed to that one moment.
One of the biggest examples of this is Williams. One can look back at the 1996-97 period when the team allowed Adrian Newey to leave for McLaren and pinpoint that moment as the one that led to the decline of Williams.
Mercedes has gone two years now without even remotely being competitive in F1. The 2023 F1 season was the first time since 2011 that the team did not even win a race.
To add to this, the superstar who was part of the team's success for all these years is moving on. None of these details point to a team that's going in the right direction and more often than not your results are a sign of whether you're doing the right or the wrong thing.
Being blindsided by Lewis Hamilton
Arguably something that might hurt the team even more is being blindsided by the suddenness of Lewis Hamilton's departure. By the looks of it, it's safe to say that Toto Wolff had no inkling that Hamilton was leaving.
While many could question the 'loyalty' bit for Hamilton, F1 is a business at the end of the day and he has every right to look out for himself and the best of his interests. There is, however, a bigger way in which this move is revelatory.
What this move does is open up even more speculation around the team because if Lewis Hamilton saw that Mercedes was heading in the right direction, he would not have decided to leave the team.
Why this might not be true
Mercedes was the runner-up last season
When we talk about Mercedes 'declining' in terms of performance in F1, we tend to forget that the team was still second in the championship last season. That's no small feat for a team that's trying to get back to the top as it is just one step behind.
If we look at Mercedes' last two seasons, it's obvious that the team is currently not at the level at which Red Bull is operating. But the gap might not be as huge as many would think. If Mercedes realigns the focus then there is a clear path towards the front.
Lewis Hamilton's departure means a primary focus now on the car
A school of thought that became more and more prominent over the last couple of years has been the focus that the team has had on bringing the eighth title to Lewis Hamilton. The British driver lost a title that appeared to be nothing more than a formality in 2021 in Abu Dhabi and since then a cloud of that day has hung over the team.
There have been far too many interviews in which Toto Wolff has stressed how the team wanted to win another title for Hamilton even though the focus should have been on the team getting back to winning.
With the star driver gone at the end of the season and one equally capable one still on the team, we could see a more focused approach towards finding performance and getting back to the top rather than being fixated on a singular type of result.
They might have something special in Kimi Antonelli
Finally, the team might have something special in Kimi Antonelli. Plenty has been written and even talked about the young Italian and far too many tout himself as the next Max Verstappen.
If the hype is real, we are looking at another once-in-a-lifetime talent on the grid. Mercedes could do with Antonelli what Red Bull has done with Verstappen and build a team around him.
With Hamilton gone, Mercedes can now switch focus and build on what it has in terms of foundation which is in general very impressive already.
Conclusion
When we look at the situation that Mercedes finds itself after Lewis Hamilton's departure, it certainly doesn't look good. The team has lost its star driver and does not look any closer to winning another title at this stage. In all of this, however, there are a few positives.
Mercedes' performance has not fallen off a cliff. It's still very competitive. There is not one but two drivers (George Russell and Kimi Antonelli) around whom the team can potentially start rebuilding. And finally, there's still James Allison as part of the team, a man known for building some great cars over the years.
In the immediate future, the team might not get back to winning ways but that was never going to happen with or without Lewis Hamilton. The team now realigns everything and starts bringing the back to where it belonged before the turbo hybrid era.
