Lewis Hamilton reveals fears F1 legend DISLIKED him before Mercedes move

Lewis Hamilton

Hamilton reveals fears F1 legend DISLIKED him before Mercedes move

The seven-time champion was worried Niki Lauda wasn't his biggest fan before joining the Silver Arrows

Lauren Sneath

Thursday 20 April 2023 06:57

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Lewis Hamilton has revealed that he thought Niki Lauda didn’t like him before he moved to Mercedes.

The seven-time world champion joined the team for the 2013 season, moving from McLaren.

Lauda, a three-time world champion, became Mercedes’ non-executive chairman in 2012, and according to Hamilton was the one who called him up to ask him to join the Brackley outfit.

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But Hamilton was convinced that Lauda was not his biggest fan before the move. In a video on the Mercedes team’s YouTube channel, Hamilton looked back at his career, holding up a photograph of him and Lauda from the Australian Grand Prix in 2018.

He said: “I miss Niki so much. We had some of the best and funniest conversations – he was one of the funniest people I've ever met.

“I know he had been quite critical of me and we hadn't actually met. So this is when I was at McLaren and he was doing commentary, and he just had an assumption of who I was and had these certain comments that he made – so you know, for me, I'm like, ‘Niki doesn't like me.’

“And I remember him giving me a call in 2012. and him asking me to come to the team, and I don't know if I even said, ‘Niki, you don't even like me, what are you talking about?’”

Niki Lauda, left, and Lewis Hamilton at the Australian Grand Prix in 2018

Lifelong friendship

The 38-year-old said that after that, the pair confirmed that they actually had a lot in common.

He said: “But we met and we had a really in-depth conversation and he's like, ‘Oh you're just you're just like me.’

“I’m like, ‘Yeah Niki I'm a racing driver,’ and he said, you know, ‘No no, you're just a hard grafter,’ and from that moment we realised that we had a lot more in common than we both anticipated and we had an amazing relationship.

“We used to fly together to races particularly back from Japan and uh he had the funniest stories that we just would just be on the floor laughing, me and Toto, with the stuff that he would come out with.

“So um he was such a fighter and he's still very much a part of the team.”