Hamilton won’t get to work with Newey after all
Lewis Hamilton says that Adrian Newey’s decision to join Aston Martin “doesn’t change anything” in terms of his move to Ferrari in 2025.
Hamilton signed for the Italian team long before Newey’s departure from Red Bull became official and he became a free agent.
However his name was quickly associated with Maranello, and for a while it appeared that Fred Vasseur had convinced him to join, potentially making Hamilton’s move look perfectly timed.
However in the end Newey opted to stay in the UK and join Aston, swayed in part by the opportunity to become a shareholder.
Asked if he was disappointed by the news Hamilton insisted that he was not.
“Honestly, no,” he said. “Whilst I mentioned before that it would be an honour to work with Adrian, I’ve been privileged to work with two championship-winning teams that didn’t have Adrian, for example.
“And I think probably any team would have been happy to have had him. But at the end of the day, you have to do what was best for him.
“It doesn’t change anything for me or my goal or my focus with the next move. So I still believe 100% that there’s lots that we can do.”
Hamilton also conceded recently that his impending departure from Mercedes is starting to hit home, having noted after Monza that it was his last race working from his room in the team’s Europe-based hospitality building.
“I couldn’t have predicted the emotional rollercoasters I’ve had already this year,” he said when asked by this writer about the subject.
“It’s definitely going to be tough, very, very difficult. I think just after the race, I was sitting in my room and after the debrief, and it literally just dawned on me. I was like, oh my god, this is our last European race, and that place had been home to such a great working environment.
“It wasn’t actually that room the whole 12 years, because we had an older motorhome in the first one or two I think it was but, but still, that was my space, and to be able to have a such an enjoyable environment, to be able to work in, it’s definitely going to be really missed.
“So I was more emotional about that than I was about the weekend, or the race! I’m just trying to be really present with the team, really try to be fully engaged in conversations. And yeah, don’t want to forget it.”
Hamilton also noted that the current competitiveness of the field is positive for F1.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “This is how it should be. I think that’s ultimately probably the goal when they set the rules. But it never works out that way.
“So it’s great that we’re in that phase with McLaren have come, have had a great rise out of nowhere, you see the Ferrari win in the last race, and us before that.
“So hopefully, these next eight races, or whatever is left, that hopefully you’ll see something more like that, and it stays consistent, I hope.”
Adam Cooper F1 