Lewis Hamilton isn’t sitting around “twiddling his thumbs” even if he isn’t quite as involved in Mercedes’ development for F1 2025.

Hamilton is in his final months of involvement in the Mercedes F1 team, but his job of helping out with future development direction remains the same.

George Russell: Nothing really changes in terms of the job

Speaking to media in Baku, Hamilton’s teammate George Russell was asked about how the day-to-day involvement of Hamilton has changed as it becomes necessary to isolate him from having too much knowledge of Mercedes’ development direction as Hamilton leaves for Ferrari at the end of this season.

“I mean, the fact is there’s no driver that designs the car, or is an aerodynamicist, that truly influences the global car performance substantially,” Russell explained.

“Our main duty is to give the feedback saying ‘We want a little bit more downforce on the front at this corner phase’, or ‘We’re struggling at that part of the corner at high speed or low speed’ –  whatever it may be.

“Then the team goes away and tries to engineer and design around our limitations.”

As a result, Russell doesn’t believe there’s anything specific changing for Hamilton’s daily routine with the team at this point.

“But, in terms of the feedback we both give, nothing will really change in that regard,” he said.

“It’s just the team have always been extremely transparent with us – in terms of the upgrades, the development, more just to keep us in the loop so we have a sort of global understanding of what is happening with the development.

“So it’s not like, suddenly, Lewis had loads of work on his plate and now he’s sitting around twiddling his thumbs. You know, the job for us mainly stays the same.”

Appearing recently on the F1 Nation podcast, 1996 F1 World Champion Damon Hill commented that the process of icing Hamilton out of plans has to have begun.

“He’s got to be excluded from conversations to do with whatever’s coming for next year,” he said.

“They don’t want to show many insights that he might take to Ferrari, particularly. So it may be he’s deprived of a little bit more information than he’s liked in the past.

“But they are an honourable team, Mercedes, and I think Toto [Wolff] is an honourable person.

“I think that he’ll always be treated fairly within a team, but there’s only so much you can give away, isn’t there, when you’ve got a guy leaving.”

But, regardless of how much Hamilton is able to store away in his head before leaving for Ferrari, Hill doubts it will amount to a whole lot of useful information anyway.

“You’d know what, in general, what the team was up to,” he said.

“Clearly, Lewis will be able to go to Ferrari and say, ‘Listen, when we changed our front wing, and our front wing did this, and that was a special tweak with the front wing that we learned and unlocked our performance’, he’ll be able to tell them that.

“But then, of course, they’ll probably already know that. Everyone watches the other teams like hawks, and nothing really is missed in what is brought forward. You can’t see what’s under the cover.

“You can’t see what’s going on with the power unit. And, let’s be honest, that is really deep science. You’re probably never going to know what’s going on under the hood. There’s only so much you can take as a driver!”