Mercedes’ Sir Lewis Hamilton has retweeted a fan’s view from 10 years ago that he was destined to fail at the Silver Arrows.
Hamilton won his first world title with McLaren in 2008, a year after he came agonisingly close to beating Kimi Raikkonen to the gold.
The British side endured a rough 2009 campaign, but the then 24-year-old still managed to coax two race wins from the underperforming car.
10 wins followed in the following three seasons after he was joined by Jenson Button, the 2009 champion replacing Heikki Kovalainen.
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During the 2012 season, Hamilton made the decision to leave McLaren and head to Mercedes to take on a new challenge.
The Briton had been plagued by reliability failures in 2012 as hit title challenge up against Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso fell apart.
McLaren had told him that they intended to build the 2013 car around him, but the time was right for the 30th world champion in Formula 1 history to move on.
He was headed to a Mercedes team that had taken over from Brawn at the end of 2009, but since their return, they had won just one race.
Nico Rosberg took victory at the Chinese Grand Prix in 2012, while he and Michael Schumacher had stood on the podium six times between them.
The seven-time champion was set to retire at the ed of the season, and Hamilton was to join his good friend and former karting team-mate, Rosberg, at the Silver Arrows.
There were suggestions that Hamilton was taking a step backwards, and one fan remarked that Hamilton was making a mistake.
“More chance of Lewis winning the lottery than winning a RACE with Merc,” was the horrifically aged tweet.
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On the day that marked 10 years since the announcement of Hamilton’s signature, the now seven-time champion shared the tweet.
Now 37, Hamilton has added a further 82 wins to his incredible tally, as well as six world titles, four of them consecutive.
Credit to the tweeter, Dale Barraclough, he has been taking the banter in his stride.