Mercedes Technical Director James Allison has admitted he wasn’t “surprised” about Lewis Hamilton’s choice to leave the Formula 1 team to move to Ferrari in 2025.
Hamilton produced a bombshell earlier this term when it was announced that he’d activated a break clause in his Mercedes deal to pursue a new venture with Ferrari.
The Briton has been associated with Mercedes his entire career and his time with the German marque’s works side has seen him become F1’s most decorated driver.
Hamilton appeared destined to conclude his career in the sport with Mercedes when it was announced last September that he had signed a new two-year agreement.
But with Hamilton’s impending exit exposing that an escape clause had been included in the terms, Allison has conceded that he was aware this situation could arise.
Asked on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast last month whether he was shocked with the revelation once it was relayed to him, Allison responded: “Not massively.
“I was surprised at the manner in which it happened, the timing of it.
“But I was aware of the nature of the contract we’d offered and the nature of the contract we’d offered permitted that to happen.
“So if it then happened, we shouldn’t be surprised because that was explicitly a thing that we were prepared to happen or else we wouldn’t have put it as an option in the contract.
“So the precise timing and sequencing of when it happened, that I think caught everyone a bit on the hop, but that it did happen, I don’t think was unpredictable.”
Allison, who worked with Michael Schumacher at Ferrari and Fernando Alonso at Renault through their title wins, considers Hamilton to be the greatest that F1’s seen.
The Briton, 56, moved from Ferrari to Mercedes in 2017 and oversaw the car designs that saw Hamilton match Schumacher’s seven Drivers’ titles benchmark in 2020.
Asked what he would miss most about Hamilton, Allison answered: “The days where he would just produce total magic that would make you go, ‘Oh, my goodness’.
“Putting a car on a road with such precision that just left all the other drivers around him with no option but to sort of surrender to what Lewis was doing on the road, the ability to make a tyre last and last and last, even while telling Bono [Hamilton’s race engineer Peter Bonnington] it wouldn’t – the drama that goes along with having him as a team-mate.
“But the just the delivery of brilliant, brilliant performance. I have said before I think he’s the best racing car driver there’s ever been, and I still believe it.”
