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A decade has now passed since one of the most important moments in recent F1 history: when Lewis Hamilton took the massive step of flying the McLaren nest to bet his future on Mercedes.
Of course, with years of success, six world championships and countless victories, it’s easy to look back and assume the move was a no-brainer.
But it was certainly a risk for Hamilton to leave McLaren for a team it had been comfortably beating for three years, and it wasn’t even a no-brainer for Mercedes.
With the manufacturer not opposed to continuing with Michael Schumacher and evaluating Nick Heidfeld and Paul di Resta as fallback options, and Hamilton’s financial demands a concern, there was such reluctance towards getting this deal over the line that the Silver Arrows could have wasted the opportunity altogether.
How different would recent F1 history have ended up then?
