“No,” he replied. “We decided as a team and we were always very transparent with Lewis, and the good thing about him is that he is able to put himself in your shoes and understand where you are coming from.”
“In that sense, there are no hard feelings, no betrayal. It was also for his own good that he changed. This was the longest relationship between a driver and a team. It was 12 years in total. And maybe he needed, in some way, to change and reinvent himself.
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“Being a Ferrari driver is a great prestige. Perhaps for us as a team it is also important to emancipate ourselves and take a different direction.”
Replacing Hamilton will be highly-rated Mercedes protégé Kimi Antonelli, with the 18-year-old Italian, who has been racing in F2 this year, preparing to take over as George Russell’s team-mate.