Lewis Hamilton’s move to Mercedes from McLaren in 2013 was viewed as highly controversial at the time.
Back then, the Silver Arrows were not known as a championship-winning team, having won just one race after they took over from Brawn GP in 2010 – coming from Nico Rosberg in China in 2012.
Hamilton made the switch to Mercedes the following year to partner Rosberg and replace the retiring seven-time champion Michael Schumacher. Not many would have expected the success the Brit would go on to have with the Brackley-based outfit.
In his 12 years with Mercedes, Hamilton won six of his seven titles and broke numerous records, including becoming the winningest driver of all time as well as having the most podiums and pole positions in F1 history.
Along with his completely unexpected success, few people would have foreseen the huge fallout between Hamilton and Rosberg as teammates between 2013-2016. After all, the pair had been great friends throughout their careers from karting to F1.
It was even difficult for Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff to comprehend, who once claimed he would ‘never understand’ how the duo fell out.
Toto Wolff will ‘never understand’ the animosity between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg at Mercedes
After finishing second in the Constructors’ Championship in 2013, the beginning of the turbo-hybrid era saw Mercedes become the package to beat – and no one could get close as they won all eight constructors’ titles during that era of regulations.
It was here that Hamilton and Rosberg’s fallout began to spiral out of control, coined the ‘Silver War.’ Rosberg says Hamilton was his ‘ultimate benchmark’ as he strived to beat him in the standings, but failed to do so in 2014 and 2015.
The 2016 season was when their drama reached boiling point with several collisions across the season, including their infamous crash in Barcelona which took them both out on the first lap. Hamilton and Rosberg collided on the final lap in Austria with the former taking the win, but he was unable to stop that latter that year.
Rosberg claimed his first and only championship by just five points before abruptly retiring from the sport. Speaking on the Beyond The Grid Podcast back in 2020, Wolff explained how he would ‘never understand’ how the fallout happened and what it was doing to the team behind the scenes.
“Some things in the relationship between Nico and Lewis we will never understand because it goes back many years from go-karting into junior formulas.
“And how it all grew from camaraderie to rivalry to animosity is something that we were spectators of.
“But the dynamics of what happened between them was very difficult to actually follow. They just fell out, pretty early on actually when I joined in 2013 and it got worse and worse and worse.
“There was a lot of negativity and that would drag the whole room down. And we came to a point where we said that’s just not feasible anymore, and we talked about it. But the animosity between the drivers was still there much beyond the point that Nico retired.”
Can Lewis Hamilton win his eighth championship with Ferrari in 2025?
Throughout his F1 career, all of Hamilton’s teammates have struggled to cope with his blistering pace. The 39-year-old has only been beaten in the standings by Jenson Button in 2011 at McLaren, Rosberg in 2016 and George Russell in 2022 and 2024.
But in 2025, Hamilton will face an all-new challenge at Ferrari as he goes up against Charles Leclerc. The Monegasque driver is well-established with the Maranello team and is one of the fastest drivers over one lap.
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Meanwhile, the Brit comes to Ferrari in poor form having registered the lowest finish of his career with seventh as he desperately struggled in qualifying – getting eliminated before Q3 six times and only qualifying on the front row once.
Hamilton has been honest with Frederic Vasseur about his qualifying struggles as he hopes a fresh start at Ferrari will be the solution he needs to solve his problems.
But Rosberg thinks Leclerc will beat Hamilton at Ferrari based on the latter’s form against Russell in 2024. The 39-year-old was outqualified 18-6 by his teammate and outraced 15-9 across the season.
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