Lewis Hamilton has always known how to control a narrative. This time, he’s rewriting one. The long‑told paddock tale that Niki Lauda talked him into leaving McLaren for Mercedes in 2013? Not quite. According to Hamilton, the decisive sales pitch came from Ross Brawn — at his mum’s kitchen table.
It’s an arresting image to attach to one of F1’s defining sliding‑doors moments. Back in late 2012, Hamilton’s jump from McLaren to a then‑middling Mercedes was framed as a step down. We know how that played out: six World Championships in silver and a career tally of seven, level with Michael Schumacher. The “step down” became the launchpad for an era.
Speaking to media at Monza, Hamilton gently corrected the record on Lauda’s role. “I’ve got so much love for Niki,” he said, “but Niki didn’t convince me to join Mercedes. It was more Ross, really, back then.” The meeting wasn’t at Brackley or in a marble‑floored office. It was in his mum’s kitchen. “He told me where the team was going and what they were doing. Niki was definitely a part of it, but it was mostly that meeting that really pulled me in.”
Brawn was, of course, steering the ship at the time. After lifting both titles with his namesake team in 2009, he sold Brawn GP to Mercedes and stayed on to run the outfit through its formative years as the Silver Arrows. He didn’t offer glitz; he offered a roadmap. And Hamilton, restless for something bigger than race wins in a McLaren that too often teased and then broke, bought in.
There’s a pleasing symmetry to Hamilton setting the record straight at Monza, of all places. Before the Italian Grand Prix weekend, he recreated one of Lauda’s most iconic images — the three‑time champion sitting on the Monza grass with his helmet and kit laid out — and posted it with “Dedicato a Niki.” It was both a tribute and a reminder: the sport’s history moves in circles, even when careers take sharp turns.
Hamilton and Lauda worked shoulder‑to‑shoulder at Mercedes until Lauda’s passing in 2019. Lauda, ever the blunt instrument, was a constant presence: equal parts mentor, firestarter and truth serum. “Niki and I had an amazing relationship,” Hamilton said. “When I didn’t do well, he’d tell me to ‘give them hell’ — but he would always say the word ‘assholes.’ I never understood it at first. I’d say, ‘Do you mean give them hell?’ and he’d say, ‘No, give them assholes!’ But he was just such a fighter.”
This season, Hamilton’s fight comes in Ferrari red. That move — seismic in its own right — wasn’t, he insists, about retracing Lauda’s steps. “When I joined Ferrari, I hadn’t even thought of Niki having driven at Ferrari,” he said. “As a kid, I watched Michael and was a big fan of the team. I always looked at the reaction from the crowd every time Ferrari was on the podium — the passion was like no other team. I wanted to feel what that was like.”
Now he does. And you could see why Monza meant something extra this year. “I got to celebrate Niki at Mercedes, I got to celebrate winning championships with him, and now to be able to come to Ferrari and celebrate him here too. His legacy continues to live on. I know what he would be saying to me nowadays, and he’s always in the back of my mind.”
Strip away the mythology and the truth is more interesting. Lauda, the figurehead, opened the door; Brawn, the architect, showed Hamilton the blueprint. The decision was made not under spotlights but under the strip lights of a family kitchen. That choice detonated the established order and defined a decade.
Hamilton’s latest chapter, chasing glory with Ferrari in 2025, doesn’t need mythmaking. The tifosi’s roar tells you everything about the stakes. And somewhere in the noise there’s a whisper of Lauda’s old advice, as inelegant as it was effective. Give them… well, you know.
