Formula 1 great Lewis Hamilton kept his Ferrari move so closely guarded that he didn\u2019t even tell his parents until the day it was announced. The British driver rocked the F1 world when it was announced on Feb. 1 that he was joining the Italian manufacturer next year, despite signing a new contract with Mercedes last summer. \u201cI didn\u2019t speak to anybody. I didn\u2019t tell my parents till the day of it being announced. So, no one knew,\u201d Hamilton told a BBC podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really wanted to do it for myself. Ultimately, I had to find out what would be the best for me.\u201d It then emerged that the two-year deal penned with Mercedes and announced last August was actually for one year with an option for a second year, which Hamilton did not take. Hamilton informed Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff of his decision to leave only the day before over breakfast at Wolff\u2019s home. They have become close friends over the years after Hamilton joined Mercedes from McLaren in 2013.<\/p>\n
The 39-year-old Hamilton and Michael Schumacher have a record seven F1 titles each, and Hamilton is the outright leader with 103 race wins and 104 pole positions. Hamilton has spoken in the past of the lure of racing with Ferrari, where Schumacher won five of his world titles. \u201cI mean, the opportunity just popped up and I was like, OK, I\u2019ve got to think for a second,'\u201d Hamilton said.<\/p>\n
\u201c(But) I didn\u2019t have a lot of time to think and I had to just go with my gut feeling and I decided to take the opportunity.\u201d Hamilton begins his last season with Mercedes on Saturday at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. His last win was at the Saudi Arabian GP in the penultimate race of the 2021 campaign, where Max Verstappen won the first of his three straight titles with Red Bull.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Formula 1 great Lewis Hamilton kept his Ferrari move so closely guarded that he didn\u2019t even tell his parents until\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":31942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[9613,7206,399,2810,7078],"class_list":["post-31941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-contract","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-mercedes"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}