'A bittersweet ending but the achievements remain indelible'

Lewis Hamilton says his final race with Mercedes in Abu Dhabi this weekend is unlikely to be the positive send-off he and the team would have wanted.

"I don't think it will end on a high," said Hamilton, who is moving to Ferrari for 2025. "It'll end. What’s important is we turn up and give it our best shot."

Hamilton has had a difficult final season with Mercedes, and it's only become more so as it has wound to its close.

He arrives in Abu Dhabi after last weekend’s race in Qatar, during which he said at one point he was "definitely not fast any more", and finished 12th after receiving two separate penalties.

It was the culmination of a season of frustration, with Hamilton comprehensively out-performed in qualifying by team-mate George Russell. Two wins at Silverstone and Spa - his first for two and a half years - were highs, but have done little to lift his general mood.

He and Mercedes, though, are insistent a low-key end to their partnership will not detract from everything they have achieved together.

Team boss Toto Wolff said: "When he took the decision to go, we knew it could be a bumpy year ahead. It’s normal.

"He knows he will go somewhere else. We know our future lies somewhere else. And to go through the ups and downs and still keep it together is something we have achieved.

"He wears his heart on his sleeve and you express your emotions and that is absolutely allowed. Nothing is going to take away 12 incredible years. That will be in the memory, rather than a season or races that were particularly bad."

Together, Hamilton and Mercedes have been the most successful team-driver combination in Formula 1 history.

After he joined in 2013, Mercedes won eight consecutive constructors’ championships, seven drivers' titles - six of them for Hamilton - and 120 grands prix.

Hamilton has become the most successful driver ever - taking six of his seven championships with Mercedes, 84 of his 105 race wins, and 78 of his 104 poles.

His other successes came with McLaren when they were Mercedes' works team. Next year - his 19th in Formula 1 - will be his first not as a Mercedes driver.

The team are determined to turn this weekend's grand prix - held on a track where Hamilton has won five times, more than any other driver - into a celebration of everything they have achieved together.

They will be doing it at the place where Hamilton's success with Mercedes came to a screeching halt amid the controversy of the title-deciding race in 2021.

Three years ago, Hamilton was on course to win a record eighth championship, having dominated the race from the start, only for race director Michael Masi to fail to apply the rules correctly during a late safety-car period.

Masi's decisions to override protocol over the handling of lapped cars and the timing of a restart were followed by Max Verstappen passing Hamilton when the race was restarted for one final lap and the title changing hands.

After a winter in which Hamilton considered walking away from F1, he and Mercedes started the following season still reeling from the perceived injustice of that day, but determined to right what they saw as a wrong.

Instead they have floundered - failing to get on top of the new technical rules introduced for 2022.

This lack of competitiveness was part of Hamilton's decision to leave for Ferrari - a team he had always dreamed of joining at one point.

The trigger was that, when he negotiated a new contract in the summer of 2023, Wolff initially wanted to give him only a one-year deal to retain flexibility about the future of his driver line-up with Hamilton approaching the age of 40.

They compromised on a one-year contract with an option for an extra season. But Hamilton knew he wanted to stay in F1 for longer. So when Ferrari came calling last winter, offering him a substantial pay rise - it is said he will earn $65m (£41m) a year at Maranello - and a longer commitment, Hamilton went for it.

"It was a brave and bold decision," says Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin - one of Hamilton's closest colleagues over the years, "but you can totally understand why he’s done it.

"He wanted to drive for more years than we were prepared to commit to. He wanted to have another chapter in his career that was about Ferrari, and it's a great challenge for him.

"As well as driving, he is still making an impact on the sport and diversity within the sport. He has more he wants to do there, and it's far easier for him to do that from the driving seat. He has such a prominent voice globally.

"That is a big part of his objectives, as well as winning races and hopefully winning the eighth championship."

When Hamilton made the decision to leave Mercedes, he had not won a race for two years, so his return to the top of the podium at the British Grand Prix in July was welcome for team and driver.

Shovlin says: "It was just lovely to be a part of it, particularly in Silverstone. It was lovely to see him up there. It was lovely to see what it meant to him.

"It was nice having known how difficult it had been for him to sort of keep asking that question: 'Have I won my last race?' Not knowing whether it's ahead of him.

"Ultimately you do it for those memories. That's why the sport's so fun and addictive and enjoyable. It’s being part of moments like that."

Overall, though, this final season has been more downs than ups. To see the all-time F1 pole position record-holder struggling so much over one lap has been as mystifying for those watching as it has for Hamilton himself.

"Car control is not an issue and the issue is not in my driving," Hamilton says. "I don’t believe it is necessarily a set-up thing. I only know so much."

All year, Hamilton has been talking about the problem being lack of confidence in the rear of the car. "It’s very unpredictable," he said in Las Vegas last month. "The floor's working and then it stops and starts. That’s been the problem."

Shovlin says: "If you look for a common theme, we have a car that is difficult to turn in the slower corners, and the way the drivers have to turn it is by sliding the rear on the way in and sliding the rear on the power on the way out.

"That adds [tyre] temperature, and dealing with that problem Lewis has found quite difficult.

"You could argue that Lewis was head and shoulders the best in the previous set of regulations. He certainly found driving the cars second nature.

"Lewis would set up the car so that, as the [rear of the] car came up [during braking] and you gained pitch, it would help you turn the car, and he relied on those elements. And that was how you generated performance in the previous set of regulations.

"He has struggled more with the way these cars run. These cars you need to run lower, you need to run stiffer, they are banging into the ground more, you haven't got as much movement in the platform from low to high speed."

Hamilton's legacy with Mercedes is about more than on-track performance and breaking records. He has led a push for more diversity and inclusion - not just at Mercedes but in F1 as a whole.

As F1's only black driver, and its most celebrated figure, Hamilton has a unique platform, and has been determined to use it for good.

"The thing I am most proud of," Hamilton says, "when I think about what I leave behind, I hope in a positive way, is the work we have done with diversity and inclusion.

"From the first moment sitting down with Toto, him and the whole team being open-minded. They have all gone on diversity and inclusion courses.

"We have a very diverse team now, which is something I am really grateful to have been a part of.

"I said to Toto: 'When I leave the team, there is going to be no-one in the room having these cool conversations with you, because I am the one, and I hope you continue them.' And he said he would."

Wolff says: "He was definitely someone who gave impulses and changed things and did things.

"Mercedes knows its responsibility on the topics of diversity and fighting racism or antisemitism. That has been always something we were absolutely targeting, and this is the responsibility of the group also.

"When he came, we were looking at things from different angles and different perspectives he provided to us."

Among other changes, Mercedes has instigated a programme called Accelerate 25, which demands that 25% of all new hires come from an under-represented background.

"His influence will have left indelible marks on our team," Shovlin says. "Not just the work he has done promoting diversity in this team and more widely within F1. But just the values he has, how he goes about his work, his commitment. He’s very open and honest with his emotional side.

"It’s been brilliant that he had the energy to continually do that. Because that wasn't something he could just say: 'I've got a great idea, let's do this.' It has taken a lot of his energy over the years to continually push these topics up the agenda."

The relationship ends on a bittersweet note. There has been no eighth title, no revenge for Abu Dhabi 2021, and the success has dried up.

But the achievements remain, indelible, undeniable.

Wolff says: "How does it feel to not achieve the eighth for him? He deserved it, and we would have loved it to be with us, with Mercedes. But at heart we know that we've had the best racing driver in the world in our cars for so many years.

"We are going to feel emotional at the end of that weekend. Sunday night, I can already visualise how that is going to feel, but it is not like he is going and he is out of our world. He's not.

"Lewis Hamilton will be very much here as a competitor, not any more on the same team, but still someone I am going to meet at home, who is going to come for dinner and will have a chat and play around with my son, and that is not going to change. It is just a journey with Mercedes that's ending."

Hamilton adds: "One of the hardest parts of the decision was when you are a part of the Mercedes team you are part of the family for ever. I don’t think that will change. We have all worked so hard, it is hopefully not a burning of a bridge. I think it will last the test of time."