“No,” he replied. “We decided as a team for that and we were always very transparent with Lewis, and the good thing with him is he is able to put himself in your position and understood where we were coming from.
“So, in that respect there are no bad feelings, there is no betrayal. It was also for the good of him to change. This was the longest run between a driver and a team. It was 12 years overall. And maybe he needed to, in a way, change and reinvent himself.
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“Being a driver for Ferrari is super-prestigious. Maybe for us as a team also it is important to emancipate ourselves and go in a different direction.”
In Hamilton’s place will come 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.
