Ferrari reportedly supports the idea of Lewis Hamilton not arriving alone at its Formula 1 team in 2025 to avoid the error that occurred when Sebastian Vettel made the switch.
Having secured four consecutive titles with Red Bull from 2010, Vettel moved to Ferrari in 2015 with the ambition of fulfilling a childhood dream and succeeding in red.
But despite logging 14 victories in five years, a combination of driver and team errors meant the German was unable to overturn the Hamilton and Mercedes dominance.
Hamilton will become the next established F1 champion to attempt to restore Ferrari to the top after it was announced that he will join the team at the start of next season.
While Vettel opted to trust the personnel Ferrari had in place at the time, Hamilton has been touted in the media to be accompanied by several trusted Mercedes employees.
According to Formu1a.uno, the Briton has already elected to adopt an approach to his latest career chapter with the decision that he “will not arrive alone” at Maranello.
Mercedes Performance Director Loic Serra had agreed a transfer to Ferrari before Hamilton, while Head of Trackside Performance Riccardo Musconi is linked.
Meanwhile, Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff has admitted that conversations over the future of Peter Bonnington, Hamilton’s long-serving race engineer, must be held.
The Italian publication states that Ferrari endeavours to satisfy Hamilton as he chases an eighth F1 title, which includes ‘open doors’ to ‘welcome’ figures from Mercedes.
Appearing on the F1 Nation podcast, journalist Roberto Chinchero divulged that Ferrari boss Frederic Vassuer had spoken about the prospect of Hamilton at the team.
The Italian reports that Vasseur believes the addition of Hamilton will serve to attract the strongest engineers to the Maranello-based squad as it bids to chase down Red Bull.
“I think for Fred [we] should be saying it’s a kind of victory, because he would like to have Lewis he said last year a couple of times,” Chinchero recounted.
“He said to me, ‘To have Lewis is something that helps you to have also the best engineers. If you have Lewis, it’s like a present card for the best engineers, a guy we are really pushing hard [for] now’.
“And I think also from this point of view, it’s a very good deal for Ferrari.”
Hamilton activated a break clause in his most recent Mercedes contract – signed in August – to complete the deal with Ferrari, which will see him partner Charles Leclerc.
The seven-time champion’s impending move will see the incumbent Carlos Sainz be out of a drive, but the Spaniard has revealed his camp is assessing the available options.
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