Ferrari confirmed Thursday that the team was signing seven-time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton to a multi-year contract. Hamilton will leave Mercedes at the end of the 2024 season, putting both top teams on wildly different trajectories going forward.

“The time is right for me to take this step and I’m excited to be taking on a new challenge,” Hamilton said. “I will be forever grateful for the incredible support of my Mercedes family … and I want to finish on a high together.”

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff also commented on Ferrari’s announcement, alluding to the team’s ambitious plans to move on from Hamilton in 2025.

We knew our partnership would come to a natural end at some point, and that day has now come,” Wolff said. “We accept Lewis’s decision to seek a fresh challenge, and our opportunities for the future are exciting to contemplate.”

For the last two seasons, Mercedes has teamed veteran Hamilton with rising star George Russell, and it seemed that that arrangement would continue when Wolff and Russell recently signed extensions. Now, Hamilton will only be around for another season, giving Russell the opportunity to become the team’s lead driver in 2025.

To replace Hamilton, Wolff will likely sign a younger driver to accompany Russell. Though it’s far too early to accurately speculate, Alex Albon has worked with the team in the past and has been impressive as a Williams driver over the last two years.

While Mercedes embraces the future through Russell, the dynamic at Ferrari will likely be more complicated. Hamilton has been the lead driver on McLaren and then Mercedes for the vast majority of his F1 career. But at age 40 next year, he will be the new face on a team already commanded by talented competitor Charles Leclerc.

Leclerc, 26, has been Ferrari’s star driver for several seasons now, and the team has repeatedly chosen to invest in him over other drivers. The Monegasque driver signed an extension with the team through 2026, leaving current Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz as the odd man out with Hamilton’s impending arrival. Leclerc and Sainz have repeatedly butted heads while vying for support from team leadership, and it is unlikely that this dynamic shifts when Hamilton replaces the latter driver.

Sainz, a capable driver with one career win and 15 podiums, will almost certainly find another team for 2025. But Ferrari could continue to face challenges as Hamilton vies for attention alongside Leclerc. For a team that has become notorious for poor and disorganized decision making in recent seasons, managing Hamilton correctly will be extremely important as the team looks to re-enter championship contention.

Lewis Hamilton, seven-time Formula One champion, could call it quits after last Sunday’s race ended in a controversial win for Max Verstappen.

“I would very much hope that Lewis continues racing – because he is the greatest driver of all times,” Toto Wolff, team principal and co-owner of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team said. “I think as a racer his heart will say he needs to continue.”

Hamilton had been going for eight. The win would’ve made him the undisputed GOAT of F1 racing passing Michael Schumacher who also won seven titles.

Hamilton was in the lead with an 11-second advantage over Verstappen when there was a crash on the track. The safety car came out and Verstappen stopped to get new tires. Hamilton kept going with the assumption that he would keep his lead over Verstappen and the cars between them that they had lapped would be enough to get him to the finish line first without new tires. And it should’ve been.

Verstappen’s Red Bull made a call to the race director, Michael Masi, and counseled him to reset the cars. Instead of resetting all the cars, Masi made a last-minute decision to take the other cars off the track and set up a dual just between Hamilton and Verstappen. Verstappen and his freshly tired car were set right behind Hamilton giving Verstappen an unfair advantage and a win.

“We are not disillusioned with the sport – we love the sport with every bone in our body, and we love it because the stopwatch never lies,” Wolff said. “But if we break that fundamental principle of sporting fairness and authenticity of the sport, then suddenly the stopwatch doesn’t become relevant anymore because we are exposed to random decision-making, that it is clear you may fall out of love with. That you start to question if all the work you have been putting in – all the sweat, tears and blood – can actually be demonstrated in terms of being the best possible performance on track, because it can be taken away randomly.”

Hamilton and Wolff will not be attending the FIA Gala in Paris on Thursday night.