The dust from Lewis Hamilton’s shock move from Mercedes to Ferrari for 2025 had barely had time to settle by the time Formula 1 testing got under way in Bahrain. The seven-time world champion and the two teams all appeared keen to get this winter’s headline story out of the way before the start of the season, to avoid speculation spilling out into the coming weeks and months and becoming an ever-larger distraction.
But while there is now clarity over the 2025 Ferrari line-up and Hamilton’s future – which we thought we already had, given he signed a two-year Mercedes deal last summer – the subject of speculation will inevitably shift to the identity of Hamilton’s successor and to how the intra-team dynamic within Mercedes will change in 2024.
It is very rare for F1 to be experiencing a situation where two high-profile stars such as Hamilton and Carlos Sainz know they will be leaving their current teams before a wheel even turned in the Bahraini desert. Hamilton’s
