A few days back, Kimi Antonelli made his first official visit to Mercedes HQ at Brackley after being announced as Lewis Hamilton’s replacement for 2025. The young teenager is the future of the team, and it is about time he starts integrating himself into the squad.

There was, however, something that stood out in all of this, and it was the comments section of the social media post made by the team.

Many Lewis Hamilton fans were left unimpressed by what they saw and claimed that Mercedes was already moving on to the new shiny object even when the partnership with Hamilton had not ended.

This was, however, not the first time that the Lewis Hamilton fanbase has taken umbrage at something that Mercedes has done this season. It has become public that the team’s and its senior personnel’s inboxes were filled with hate mail from fans insinuating that the team was sabotaging the driver.

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Even Toto Wolff had to publicly admit the existence of such emails and that the team would take criminal action against the perpetrators. Once that was done and Lewis saw a surge in form, winning the races in Silverstone and Spa, the German team did not receive any blowback.

Then came the most recent race in Singapore, where the fans expressed outrage again after Lewis Hamilton shared in a private event that he wanted to start the race on medium tires, but the team pushed him into starting the race on softs.

This article is primarily for the Lewis Hamilton fans, a lot of whom have been outraged over the driver’s last season with Mercedes with allegations that just don’t stand any logical breakdown of events. With that being said, dear fans, there’s no sabotage!

Most importantly, there are only 6 races left in this Mercedes-Lewis Hamilton partnership, a combination that is the most successful in F1 history. Enjoy it while it lasts.

The ludicrous allegations have no basis. The problem with the allegations is that they hold no basis whatsoever. So much so that even Lewis Hamilton had to step in after Singapore and explain that there was no foul play. The driver had said in the event that he wanted to start the race on medium tires while the team wanted to start the race on soft ones.

That does not mean that there was any sabotage involved and Hamilton didn’t know what tires he started his race on. It simply means that the two parties argued over a detail before a race and then the decision was made to start the race on soft tires, something that the driver would have been aware of as well. Before this, Hamilton losing out to teammate George Russell for the podium in Canada had led to feelings of anger among the fans, so much so that the leaked fan emails accused team boss Toto Wolff of sabotage.

The problem with such accusations is that, foundationally, they’re not coming from the right place. While there have been incidents where Hamilton has had the short end of the stick in terms of strategy, at the same time, the same thing happened to George Russell as well.

One has to question where Russell could have finished if he wasn’t nursing the power unit issue from the very first lap of the race in Silverstone. Or, for that matter, why was Mercedes not agile enough to determine that the car could be underweight if George executed a single-stop race at Spa.

There have been multiple races where Lewis Hamilton’s teammate has been compromised by either reliability issues or strategic deficiency. It is a double standard to claim that Hamilton’s issues are a result of a ‘conspiracy’ against him whilst overlooking similar troubles that George Russell has faced.

In F1, mistakes happen, and that’s the baseline everyone has to try and operate from.

Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes: The Iconic partnership
Now, the most important part. We have to understand one very basic thing. This is the end of an iconic partnership. Lewis Hamilton joined this team in 2013 and has been part of the squad for more than a decade. During this time, Hamilton has won 6 world titles and become the most successful driver in the history of F1.

At the same time, he’s developed a very close bond with the team and the boss, Toto Wolff, as well. The two are close friends and have been for a long time now.

In F1, a decade or so from now, there will be a time when the F1 fraternity is going to bring up how Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes teamed up to bring the entire grid to submission.

That’s the legacy that this partnership leaves behind. What these two parties have achieved together will go down in history as the most successful combination. This is the significance of the partnership that is coming to an end.

Message to Lewis Hamilton fans
At this stage, all that the Lewis Hamilton fans need to do is understand that there’s no foul play here from the team or even the driver as both sides are trying their best to achieve what would be the best possible ending to this relationship.

On some level, fans need to understand this as well and treat the situation as what it really is. This is the end of the most dominant driver-team combinations in the history of the sport. There are just races left, enjoy it before it comes to an end.

Edited by Shirsh