Lewis Hamilton has opened up about his decision to leave McLaren and join Mercedes in 2013, admitting he has taken great satisfaction from proving those who doubted the move wrong.
After making the audacious decision to join Mercedes in 2013, Hamilton was warned his Formula 1 career was over, but the seven-time world champion has had the last laugh.
While Mercedes had struggled in their first three seasons, winning only one race, Hamilton had won the 2008 world championship with McLaren. Hamilton’s decision was therefore rather surprising and questioned by both fans and analysts.
Some said that after making the switch, his “career was over,” but he went on to win six world titles at Mercedes and has since responded. Hamilton identified the decision as the turning point in his professional life during an interview with Performance People.
“They were probably the fifth or sixth-best team at the time, so they were frequently finishing out of the top 10, struggling to get into the top 10. As a World Champion, people were like: ‘This is the worst decision you can make, this not a great team and your career is over.
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But I was like, ‘I want to take the leap of faith and I’m going to go with it, regardless of what people say.’ Pretty much everyone told me to stay, but this was the best thing for me.
“It will probably have been when I decided to join Mercedes,” Hamilton said. “I was in Thailand at the time, in between races after Singapore, and that’s when I made the decision. “I was with a championship-winning team. I was with McLaren, which had such a great history. Obviously Mercedes used to own half of McLaren, so it was partly their team, but then they broke away and bought their own team and as they were trying to ramp up.