Lewis Hamilton must wonder what might have been when he looks at new F1 world champion Kimi Antonelli, Martin Brundle says.

Hamilton left Mercedes at the end of the 2024 season to join Ferrari, but the Silver Arrows have returned to the top of F1 following the regulation changes.

While their early dominance has faded as the season has progressed, Mercedes have still won 12 out of 19 Grands Prix this year, with Antonelli responsible for nine of those victories.

Lewis Hamilton has no regrets about Ferrari move – but should he?

Hamilton still has a chance of finishing runner-up behind Antonelli in the standings, but he is a whopping 121 points behind the driver who succeeded him. His only victory of the season came at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix in June.

Brundle doesn’t think Hamilton regrets his move to Ferrari, but suspects Antonelli’s success may have sown some doubts.

Brundle told Sky Sports: “A bit of Lewis must be standing there thinking, ‘If I’d have stayed at Mercedes, that would have been my eighth world championship.’

“But would it? George Russell was giving Lewis a pretty hard time in his later years there in the team, so who knows?

“We can only guess and wonder about that, but Lewis must have been watching and thinking, ‘Young Kimi, I left him a lovely message on the driver room wall when I left to wish him luck, and he’s got the championship and I haven’t this year.’

“I don’t think Lewis has got too many regrets. He wanted to go Ferrari. He’s done it, he’s enjoyed it and he’s going better and better there.”

Speaking in parc ferme after he finished second at the Mexico City Grand Prix, Hamilton passed his ‘huge congratulations’ on to Antonelli and said he was ‘grateful’ to witness a ‘phenomenal’ achievement as the 20-year-old became F1’s youngest-ever world champion.

Hamilton is confident that Ferrari can topple Antonelli and Mercedes next year as long as they address their well-documented straight-line speed weakness.

“I’m hoping next year we have an engine to be able to actually compete with them,” he said. “I mean, this year they were just flying past us on most of the straights throughout the year.

“So if we can fix that and keep this car, the base of it, I think we can do really great. So I’m relying on the team. I have 100% faith in them.”

Hamilton was under contract at Mercedes until the end of 2025 but opted out of the final year of his deal. Given his struggles at the end of the ground-effect era, it’s unclear whether the team would have offered him an extension.

Toto Wolff has said that Hamilton resolved a headache by leaving, with Antonelli’s form in the junior categories suggesting he could be a generational talent.

As such, it’s not certain that Hamilton would have been offered an extension for 2026, despite breaking all of F1’s biggest records in Mercedes colours.