Lewis Hamilton will join Ferrari for the 2025 season, but his decision is raising questions.
According to Express Sport readers, Ferrari made the incorrect decision to let Carlos Sainz go in order to get Lewis Hamilton.
The iconic Brit stunned the motorsport world when his move to the Scuderia was revealed in February, but his recent performances have sparked questions about his future in the sport.
When Fred Vasseur made the decision to bring the seven-time world champion to Maranello, he was coming off a strong P3 Drivers’ Championship result, trailing only Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.
However, after five rounds of the 2024 season, Hamilton is in ninth place in the rankings, with only one top-eight finish. His remarkable recovery drive in Shanghai resulted in a P9 finish from P18 on the grid, but this means the famous Brit has only six points from the previous four Grands Prix.
In a survey of 1,610 Express Sport readers, 82% thought Vasseur made a mistake by not renewing Sainz’s contract, while only 18% thought the Frenchman was correct in passing up the former Renault and McLaren star in favor of signing Hamilton when the opportunity arose.
While Hamilton’s struggles are understandable given the context of some misfortune, the unpredictability of Mercedes’ 2024 challenger, the W15, and a poor qualifying record off the back of some ill-fated set-up experiments, there is no escaping the fact that the seven-time champion has been outshone by Sainz this year.
Since his departure from Ferrari was announced in February, Sainz has been a man on a mission. The Madrid-born racer began the season on the podium behind the two Red Bulls, before coming back from appendicitis to win the Australian Grand Prix with an extraordinarily calm drive.