Lewis Hamilton finally announced his departure from McLaren recently, signing a three-year agreement to race for the Mercedes-Petronas F1 team for the 2013 Formula One season.
He and Nico Rosberg will be teammates in next year’s season. Rosberg and Hamilton had been teammates in 2000 at TeamMBM.com in Formula A karting. With this team’s financial muscle and determination, as well as dedication to the sport, things are bound to shake up in the coming F1 season as there were mixed reactions to his departure from his longtime mentor and father figure, McLaren’s Ron Dennis.
Lewis, along with three other drivers—Juan Manuel Fangio, Mika Häkkinen and Jenson Button—have been powered by the tri-star brand and won the Formula One world championship. With 20 F1 victories, he is equal with Häkkinen’s record as the most successful Mercedes-Benz Formula One driver.
Lewis will replace Michael Schumacher, who said: “I have had three nice years with the team which unfortunately did not go as well as we all would have wanted on the sporting side. I wish Lewis well and for the team to achieve the success we worked so hard for in the buildup. I would like to thank the team for their trust and all the guys for their unconditional commitment. I will now concentrate on the next races.”
In turn, Hamilton said: “It is now time for me to take on a fresh challenge and I am very excited to begin a new chapter racing for the Mercedes-AMG-Petronas Formula One Team. Mercedes-Benz has such an incredible heritage in motorsport, along with a passion for winning which I share. Together, we can grow and rise to this new challenge. I believe that I can help steer the Silver Arrows to the top and achieve our joint ambitions of winning the world championships.”
Free driving lesson
A week before his announcement, Hamilton had to retire from the 2012 Singapore Grand Prix due to gearbox problems. On that week, he had a chance to take VIP guests of Johnnie Walker for a spin in the new McLaren MP4-12C and got a free driving lesson from UK’s top stunt driver and Guinness World Record Holder Russ Swift. Swift showed the young F1 champion a thing or two on how to do trick maneuvers in the McLaren supercar and sent this photo to this writer and agreed to have his photo published in the Inquirer. Both Swift and Hamilton are no strangers in Manila, Swift has been a regular performer at the Manila International Auto Show while Hamilton spent two days in Manila to raise aid and awareness for Soccer Aid 2012, a project of Unicef.
This was also not the first time that the world-famous UK stunt driver has done something for the 2008 F1 world champion. In October 2007, Microsoft arranged Swift to burn tire marks and use wheel-spins to carve out a message of good luck for Hamilton in South West London’s Battersea Power Station. Swift used a motorbike to carve out the words “Go Lewis” in huge letters on the tarmac a week before the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix. The iconic coal-fired power station served as a backdrop of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight,” as well as several scenes in the 1970s British sci-fi TV series “Dr. Who.”