Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes, every season RANKED

Mercedes

RANKED: Lewis Hamilton's decade with Mercedes

Ten years with Mercedes, which one was Hamilton's best?

Ben Rudd

Saturday 11 February 2023 14:30 Updated: 14:56

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TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson famously compared Lewis Hamilton’s move from McLaren to Mercedes to moving from Manchester United to West Ham. How wrong could he have been?

Hamilton has added six world championships to his name since joining the Silver Arrows in 2013.

Having completed his 10th year with the Brackley-based outfit, GPFans ranks each of those campaigns!

10. 2022 - Sixth in drivers' standings

Not entirely Hamilton's fault, the issues plaguing the Mercedes W13 left the team third best for the entirety of the campaign.

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Whilst experiments on set up early in the year do mitigate his loss to George Russell in the drivers' standings, no wins or pole positions on the year for the first time in his F1 career is enough to put this bottom.

9. 2013 - Fourth in drivers' standings

In his first season with Mercedes, Hamilton finished with a race victory and five podiums.

But tyre degradation hindered the Silver Arrows throughout the year - take the Spanish Grand Prix as the clearest example - limiting Hamilton's chances.

A distant fourth in the standings was all that was manageable.

8. 2016 - Second in drivers' standings

A classic season and not one where Hamilton was poor by any stretch of the imagination.

His intra-team rivalry with Nico Rosberg was reaching its peak and two separate collisions, in Spain and Austria, highlighted the gloves-off nature of the battle.

It seemed Hamilton would close down Rosberg's lead into the final stages of the year, before engine failure in Malaysia halted his charge.

The German held on for his first and only world title.

7. 2017 - World champion

The first of six title-winning campaigns in our list, this was perhaps the least spectacular.

New team-mate Valtteri Bottas was unable to reach the heights Nico Rosberg did, leaving Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel as Hamilton's main rival.

Nine wins and 13 podiums allowed Briton Hamilton to comfortably seal what would be his fourth championship by 46 points.

6. 2018 - World champion

A similar story a year later with Vettel again the main aggressor.

Eleven victories make the picture look pretty clear, a typical Hamilton romp to the title.

But in reality Vettel was a tough opponent, leading the race for the title before his crash out of the lead at the German Grand Prix.

In the second half of the season, Hamilton asserted his dominance to collect championship number five.

5. 2014 - World champion

The first of Hamilton's championships with Mercedes, whilst a one-horse race constructors' wise, was a classic.

The 70-point victory margin over team-mate Rosberg is skewed by the double-points season finale, and the battle between the pair throughout the season was intense.

That season's Bahrain Grand Prix is a modern classic, with Hamilton forced to push himself to ensure he kept his former karting team-mate at bay.

4. 2019 - World champion

While the 2019 Formula 1 season may look like one of the ‘average’ dominant seasons by Hamilton, at the time he broke the record for having won the most points in a Formula 1 campaign with 413, a mark broken by Max Verstappen last year.

It was another incredible year with 11 wins and 17 podiums in a year where both Ferrari and Red Bull emerged as challengers.

The diminishing dominance of the Mercedes was proven by Hamilton claiming only five pole positions, underlining his skill on race day.

3. 2015 - World champion

Why is 2015 so high on the list? Well, Hamilton won over half the races on the calendar and finished off the podium just twice.

His winning margin of 59 points over team-mate Rosberg underlined Hamilton's sheer domination across the campaign.

2. 2020 - World champion

The year curtailed by the Covid-19 pandemic, with Red Bull and Ferrari supposedly poised to join the fight for championships properly saw Hamilton take it up a gear.

Only 17 races were run that season, Hamilton won 11 - and that is all whilst missing the penultimate race of the year through Covid. This was all whilst increasing his campaign for equality and inclusion in F1 and wider society, proving off-track matters can mix with his performance on-track.

1. 2021 - Second in drivers' standings

He may not have won the world championship but we may never see Hamilton reach the heights of his powers as he did in 2021.

Cruelly denied in the controversial end to the year in Abu Dhabi, Hamilton and Verstappen were relentless all year, pushing each other beyond their limits on occasion.

The Red Bull looked the car to beat yet Hamilton secured eight wins, only one behind Verstappen who took full advantage of THAT safety car period.