The man with special Hamilton relationship who has lured F1 star to Ferrari

01 February 2024 , 19:00

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The man with special Hamilton relationship who has lured F1 star to Ferrari

By joining Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton will link up with the man who helped him on the road to Formula 1 almost two decades ago.

The year is 2005 - a fresh-faced teenager from Stevenage is competing in his first season at Formula 3 level with the French team now known as ART Grand Prix. His boss? Frederic Vasseur.

And they made a pretty good team. With the help of the Frenchman's guidance, Hamilton won the title that year, then got promoted and did exactly the same thing in GP2 - again racing for ART and Vasseur.

He earned his McLaren seat off the back of that and the rest is history. Seven world titles and 103 race wins later Hamilton is one of the most successful drivers F1 has ever seen, and arguably the very best.

Except, he is not done. The Briton is 39 and will have turned 40 by the time he races with Ferrari for the first time, but still his passion burns brightly. He wants to continue until he wins that eighth title and clearly believes he has a better chance of doing that at Ferrari rather than Mercedes.

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And, again, he will be working under Vasseur as he attempts to do so. The relationship between them has endured - the Frenchman said so himself last year when he was quizzed on another set of rumours linking Hamilton with a move to Ferrari.

"I talk to him at every GP, he raced for me 20 years ago and we are still close," he said. "Clearly, if [the media] see us together in the paddock, there's a lot of fuss, but the relationship has remained. I don't want to compare him to our drivers, it wouldn't make sense."

The chance to rekindle that partnership with Vasseur may well have played a key role in convincing the Brit to leave his Mercedes "family". Also important has been the involvement of Ferrari chairman John Elkann, who has for a long time held the desire to convince Hamilton to move to Maranello.

Sky Sports reporter Craig Slater revealed that connection on Thursday when he said: "My understanding is that this courtship has been going on for some months - it's not a sudden thing. John Elkann, the president and a very heavy-hitter, is very much at the centre of it and the driving force.

"Team principal Fred Vasseur is someone Lewis knows from the junior days, so there's no friction there. It's not like the chairman has signed someone over the manager's back, that you sometimes get in football! This isn't like that."

Daniel Moxon