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I'm a great fan of speculative alternate timelines. So what if Lewis Hamilton had signed that allegedly very lucrative new three year deal that Mclaren supposedly offered him in 2012?

Schumacher may have stayed on for one more season, although he was already struggling for motivation and perhaps sadly may not have been retained anyway. My suspicion is that Sergio Perez (who was considered extremely promising at the time) may well have landed that second Mercedes seat for 2013 on a two year deal.

Had Sergio disappointed in the Mercedes then perhaps Alonso and Vettel would have been available for them in 2015. But I would assume that Rosberg would have won the 2014 title with astonishing ease in this timeline, so would Merc rock the boat by employing an equal number 1 alongside him? Or would Perez have actually thrived for Mercedes?

In this timeline Hamilton may well have experienced the joys of the 2015 Mclaren Honda. That would have made for fun team radio. All pure speculation of course. But a lot of drivers would have had very different careers in this scenario, none more so than Hamilton.

The fact is though that Hamilton didn't leave McLaren because they had a poor car, a reason for many drivers to leave teams, he left because he didn't want to drive for McLaren anymore, he would have only stayed at McLaren if the Mercedes seat had never been available.

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I think Vettel would have gone give his defeat to Ricciardo. I think seb has the beating of Rosberg over a season

There are always out clauses. Hamilton would have left if all he had was that poor McLaren. He already didn't like how things were going there back in 2012.

I think the most important thing here is that Hamilton didn't choose Mercedes, Mercedes chose Hamilton. Whoever Mercedes approached was going to sign there. Brawn already understood what 2014 was going to be like. In 2012 he was making comments of how they were going to be the cream of the crop in 2014. Hamilton would have to be a complete tool to ignore that, which obviously he wasn't. Once Mercedes worked out Schumachers exit, they could make the Lewis deal public.

As for the timeline if Hamilton doesn't go to Merc... Rosberg wins multiple championships and is considered one of the all time greats.

No Mercedes would have signed Vettel for 2015.

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Mercedes initially seemed very keen on an all German lineup, Schumacher, Rosberg and Heidfeld as their third driver was the 2010 lineup. I imagine they must have had plans to try and nab Vettel at some point that isn't out of the realms of possibility by any means.

Indeed and Vettel was reputedly in talks with Mercedes in 2016.

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Vettel wasnt in talks with Mercedes it was a figment of F1 commentators imagination as Rosberg signed a 2yr deal at the end of '15 and Hamilton had a contract to end of '17.

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What do you mean no? Rosberg beat Lewis one year, who's to say he doesn't beat Vettel as well.

One season were Hamilton had more mechanical issues, do you think that Rosberg would have totally rolled over Vettel?

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You don't need to roll someone over to beat them to the title. I suspect it would have been close but in this hypothetical situation - I choose Rosberg winning back to back titles in 2015 over Vettel showing up year 1 to the new team and winning it all. Obviously could go either way.

I think the 2014 silly season would have been epic. If Hamilton had stayed at McLaren for 2013 and 2014 I think he would want to move on so he would be in the frame for the 2015 Mercedes drive, although I get the impression he could have been tempted to stay with the Honda engine on the horizon (all the hype at the time and the whole Senna/McLaren Honda thing would have appealed to him).

So I think it would come down to Alonso and Vettel and I think Vettel would end up at Ferrari if given the choice between that and the Mercedes drive, meaning Alonso in a Mercedes.

Of course it's also entirely possible that Rosberg would have soundly beaten whoever his teammate was for 2014 and Mercedes would decide not to rock the boat and keep the same lineup with Rosberg as the lead driver.

Vettel's dilemma would have been interesting. To go to a team which could pretty much guarantee him a title challenge, or take the challenge to try and help Ferrari back to the top. One of those good old fashioned head or heart decisions.

I think Mercedes would've either kept Michael for another year or moved for Hulk. Hulk vs Nico would've been interesting but short lived as the loser makes way for either Seb,Lewis or Alonso in 2015 or 2016 depending on contracts and such.

I think Lewis ends up there in 2016 whatever happens, he has a good relationship with Mercedes so if he made overtures I think they'd move for him over the other two even if he's turned them down in 2012, I think they'd understand why.

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"Clark came through at the end of the first lap so far ahead that we in the pits were convinced that the rest of the field must have been wiped out in an accident."
-Eddie Dennis, describing the dominance of Jim Clark in the Lotus 49 at Spa 1967

Lewis should have known Mercedes were investing in the 2014 Mercedes engine to be unbeatable. He must have had knowledge from Mercedes, McLaren and Honda.

He has said that he had more than the 2 options of McLaren and Mercedes, evaluated each one and decided that Mercedes were the best option.

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That seems odd to me. A lot of journalists around the time of Hamilton's move suspected the 2014 rule change would put Mercedes in a competitive position. Obviously there was no guarantee of success but I would be surprised if neither driver even had an inkling that 2014 would be a big opportunity.

I think at the time a good 90% of people thought that Hamilton was making a mistake, nowadays that figure has dropped down to about 50%.

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If Hamilton would have stayed at McLaren he would have likely done a bit better than Alonso, but with all the same people defecting from McLaren while with, and since his departure from the team, the cars would have been just as Alonso found them to be. Difficult to drive and lacking a bit of performance and considerably down on power with woeful reliability after the Honda switch.

Bottom line is that F1 teams are comprised of elite engineers and some are a cut above and those few selects guys are what makes the difference between excellent cars and superior ones.
With McLaren not only losing some of those guys along with key lead figures such as Martin Whitmarsh and Ron Dennis, whom were instrumental in building the empire that Lewis walked into, things are not well at McLaren Technologies. Though he's trying hard and is looking to extend the reach of the brand in order to create more opportunities for both the company and their drivers, I find Zak Brown to be a bit out of his depth and the team NEEDS a leader who knows F1 or upper echelon racing through and through. Its a highly complex and vast entity in the most cutthroat environment and requires a special kind of guidance and leadership that not many people can offer.

While Hamilton was fortunate that Mercedes opted to sign him rather than wait around for Michael to decide if he indeed wanted to continue, if you think back, though they weren't what they turned out to be, they were the team along with Red Bull that was constantly looking to innovate and try new things rather than react to what others were doing and then try to replicate them. Under Ross Brawn they were pushing the limits in many facets and never stopped trying to refine and improve their cars. It was only a matter of time before they moved up a few notches in the pecking order. Add to that the rivalry between Hamilton and Rosberg and they both stepped up their game, and a modern Prost/Senna-like era was born. I wish Rosberg would have continued racing, possibly moving to Ferrari.

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HAMILTON :: ALONSO :: VETTEL :: RAIKKONEN :: RICCIARDO :: VERSTAPPEN
BOTTAS :: MAGNUSSEN :: OCON :: SAINZ :: PEREZ :: VANDOORNE :: HULKENBERG
GROSJEAN :: GASLY :: ERICSON :: LECLERC :: STROLL :: SEROTKIN :: HARTLEY

There is no timeline at all that would have made Hamilton stay with McLaren. I’m positive he would have left for any team like Lotus or Williams if Mercedes hadn’t come calling just to get away from Whitmarsh and Button. I mean at Spa 2012 Hamilton was very much in the title fight against Alonso and Vettel and yet the team somehow conspired to give the better rear wing down force setting to an erratic Button and he duly delivered what to date was his 1 and only McLaren pole. I mean why were they coddling Button so much? Ferrari were breaking seals on Massa’s gear boxes and Redbull were taking front wings off Webber’s car and yet McLaren were wasting time and resources on the slower driver. Of course Hamilton was disillusioned which is why he unadvisedly twitted telemetry to the world just to show how different the cars were performing. This was information he didn’t have before qualifying as Hamilton and Button had each tested a different downforce setting but somehow not all the information had filtered from Button to Hamilton. Smooth operator that Jenson! Still, Hamilton was willing to stay as long as the car had potential, but then McLaren couldn’t even handle that as Mechanicals and pit errors cost Hamilton from great positions especially the straw that broke the camel that was Singapore.
So I cannot envisage a scenario where Hamilton stayed with McLaren because in the end, besides staying for the cheque, there was no reason to as he had way more ambition than that.

So much we can never know. I think a key point would be how would Mercedes react.
Had Hamilton won the championship, and looked capable of doing it the following year, would Mercedes have backed Mclaren over their own team and never developed into what they became?

Had Mclaren continued as the forefront Mercedes team, so much would be different, from the amount of funding Merc put into their own team, how points would have fallen to other teams like Ferrari and Red Bull etc, the whole dynamic could have changed. Lotus was in front of Merc, so they still did not look like a title winning car.

Cash spent on Mclaren looked a better bet to the board.

I believe the Mercedes split with McLaren was because of the aftermath of spygate, they were never happy with how they got dragged into it, car companies don't want to be involved in scandals.

The situation that arose with Brawn gave Mercedes the chance to commence divorce proceedings with McLaren, once they bought Brawn I believe they sold their shares in McLaren, however they still had to honour the engine deal they had with McLaren.

That engine deal ended 2013/14(?), so McLaren would then have to start to pay for Mercedes engines, this probably the main reason why they then recruited Honda?

In respect to Hamilton if he had won the title with McLaren in 2012 then he wouldn't have left the team, but then again McLaren would have been a totally different team to what they were, largely dysfunctional and they still are to this day.

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Let’s assume that Vettel gets Hamilton’s car, mechanics and everything.

In 2015, Rosberg had worse reliability than Hamilton, so presumably he would have worse reliability than Vettel as well. Also, Vettel was in amazing form in 2015. Seb wins the title that year.

In 2016, Rosberg has better reliability and Vettel was in relatively poor form, so Rosberg wins the title that year.

2017 onward... who knows?

That's a lot of if's and but's. You don't know that reliability would remain the same in either year. With a different driver, a different development path may have been explored. You can't tell if Vettel would have performed the same, in a brand new car, just too many unknowns. For my liking at least!

I think personally if Hamilton doesn't sign for Mercedes in 2013 that Mercedes would have put the same agreement in place with Vettel that Ferrari eventually did and signs someone like Hulkenberg as a stop gap. Rosberg wins the title in 2014 and Vettel is still beaten by Ricciardo and activates the clause with Mercedes for 2015. Alonso swaps Ferrari for McLaren after Mercedes sign Vettel and Hamilton moves to Ferrari in 2015 also.

I would see it more as Hamilton going to Mercedes in 2015 and Vettel to Ferrari given in Vettel's case he had a pre-contract with Ferrari and always wanted to drive for Ferrari.

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