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Lewis Hamilton moved from McLaren to Mercedes in 2013, when the German team wasn’t very successful. Five world titles later, he can say the gamble paid off.
Hamilton won his first world title with McLaren in 2008, his second Formula 1 season. The title eluded him in subsequent years and at the end of 2012 he decided to move to Mercedes. It was a move that many were puzzled by, especially considering Mercedes finished 2012 in P5.
However, hindsight being 20/20, it was a brilliant decision as he won the title in 2014 and proceeded to repeat the feat four more times. The Briton was asked by Ziggo Sport if he was happy the gamble paid off.
“For sure, I’m naturally very proud of the decision I took,” explained the Briton.
“I think the important lessons to take from it is in life we often need to seek approval from other people, sometimes we don’t know what the answers are so we try and get it [those answers] from people around us.
“But those people often only have an opinion and don’t actually know what the answers are [either]. I was told by everyone around me to stay put at McLaren…even my dad said ‘stay’.
“And what I did at that time is I just had to listen and really try and dig deep and figure it out for myself and for what I wanted to do.
“Whatever decisions I take, I will have to deal with the consequences moving forwards but that’s my choice. I think that is really important for people to be themselves and do what suits you.
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“Be and do what you want to do and not what people expect you to do. That was a really great step for me.
“I did that and said ‘you know what? I’m going to try and take everything I have learnt from all these years and try and apply it to this team’.
“So I came to the factory and changed a ton of things on the car. There was a great amount of respect between us [Mercedes and I], I guess because of the career that I already had.
“The guys were just so excited and we worked and bonded and made massive strides already at the beginning.
“We won our World Championship early in the second year but we continued to face every single year the same as the first year since I joined in 2013.
“We don’t slack. It’s not like we are just going to chill and arrive and be at the front. We have the same difficult conversations and we push and elevate each other.
“It’s been a dream, it really has been a dream,” concluded Hamilton.
