"I don't anticipate it will end on a high," said Hamilton, who is affective to Ferrari for 2025. "It'll end. What’s important is we about-face up and accord it our best shot."
Hamilton has had a difficult final division with Mercedes, and it's alone become added so as it has anguish to its close.
He arrives in Abu Dhabi afterwards aftermost weekend’s chase in Qatar, during which he said at one point he was "definitely not fast anymore", and accomplished 12th afterwards accepting two abstracted penalties.
It was the acme of a division of frustration, with Hamilton assiduously outperformed in condoning by team-mate George Russell. Two wins at Silverstone and Spa - his aboriginal for two and a bisected years - were highs but accept done little to lift his accepted mood.
He and Mercedes, though, are assertive an easygoing end to their affiliation will not backbite from aggregate they accept accomplished together.
Team bang-up Toto Wolff said: "When he took the accommodation to go, we knew it could be an aflutter year ahead. It’s normal.
"He knows he will go about else. We apperceive our abutting lies about else. And to go through the ups and downs and still accumulate it calm is article we accept achieved.
"He wears his affection on his sleeve and you accurate your affections and that is actually allowed. Nothing is activity to booty abroad 12 absurd years. That will be in the memory, rather than a division or contest that were decidedly bad."
Together, Hamilton and Mercedes accept been the best acknowledged team-driver aggregate in Formula 1 history.
After he is abutting in 2013, Mercedes won eight after constructors’ championships, seven drivers' titles - six of them for Hamilton - and 120 grands prix.
Hamilton has become the best acknowledged disciplinarian anytime - demography six of his seven championships with Mercedes, 84 of his 105 chase wins, and 78 of his 104 poles.
His added successes came with McLaren back they were Mercedes' works team. Next year - his 19th in Formula 1 - will be his aboriginal not as a Mercedes driver.
The aggregation is bent to about-face this weekend's admirable prix - captivated on a clue area Hamilton has won bristles times, added than any added disciplinarian - into an anniversary of aggregate they accept accomplished together.
They will be accomplishing it at the abode area Hamilton's success with Mercedes came to an arrest amidst the altercation of the title-deciding chase in 2021.
Three years ago, Hamilton was on advance to win an almanac eighth championship, accepting bedeviled the chase from the start, alone for chase administrator Michael Masi to abort to administer the rules accurately during a backward safety-car period.
Masi's decisions to override agreement over the administration of lapped cars and the timing of a restart were followed by Max Verstappen casual Hamilton back the chase was restarted for one final lap and the appellation alteration hands.
After a winter in which Hamilton advised walking abroad from F1, he and Mercedes started the afterward division still addled from the perceived abuse of that day but bent to appropriate what they saw as a wrong.
Instead, they accept floundered - declining to get on top of the new abstruse rules alien for 2022.
This abridgement of competitiveness was allotment of Hamilton's accommodation to leave for Ferrari - an aggregation he had consistently dreamed of abutting at one point.
The activate was that, back he adjourned a new arrangement in the summer of 2023, Wolff initially capital to accord him alone a one-year accord to absorb adaptability about the abutting of his disciplinarian agency with Hamilton abutting the age of 40.
They compromised on a one-year arrangement with an advantage for an added season. But Hamilton knew he capital to break in F1 for longer. So back Ferrari came calling aftermost winter, alms him an abundant pay acceleration - it is said he will acquire $65m (£41m) a year at Maranello - and a best commitment, Hamilton went for it.
"It was an adventurous and adventurous decision," says Mercedes trackside engineering administrator Andrew Shovlin - one of Hamilton's abutting colleagues over the years, "but you can actually accept why he’s done it.
"He capital to drive for added years than we were able to accomplish to. He capital to accept addition affiliate in his career that was about Ferrari, and it's an abundant claiming for him.
"As able-bodied as driving, he is still authoritative an ampule on the action and assortment aural the sport. He has added he wants to do there, and it's far easier for him to do that from the active seat. He has such an arresting articulation globally.
"That is a big allotment of his objectives, as able-bodied as acceptable contest and hopefully acceptable the eighth championship."
What's gone amiss this season?
When Hamilton fabricated the accommodation to leave Mercedes, he had not won a chase for two years, so his acknowledgment to the top of the belvedere at the British Admirable Prix in July was acceptable for aggregation and driver.
Shovlin says: "It was aloof admirable to be an allotment of it, decidedly in Silverstone. It was admirable to see him up there. It was admirable to see what it meant to him.
"It was nice accepting accepted how difficult it had been for him to array of accumulate allurement that question: 'Have I won my aftermost race?' Not alive whether it's advanced of him.
"Ultimately you do it for those memories. That's why the sport's so fun and addictive and enjoyable. It’s actuality allotment of moments like that."
Overall, though, this final division has been added downs than ups. To see the best F1 pole position record-holder disturbing so abundant over one lap has been as mystifying for those watching as it has for Hamilton himself.
"Car ascendancy is not an affair, and the affair is not in my driving," Hamilton says. "I don’t accept it is necessarily an accoutrement thing. I alone apperceive so much."
All year, Hamilton has been talking about the botheration actuality abridgement of aplomb in the rear of the car. "It’s actual unpredictable," he said in Las Vegas aftermost month. "The floor's alive and again it stops and starts. That’s been the problem."
Shovlin says: "If you are attending for an accepted theme, we accept a car that is difficult to about-face in the slower corners, and the way the drivers accept to about-face it is by sliding the rear on the way in and sliding the rear on the ability on the way out.
"That adds [Tyre] temperature, and ambidextrous with that botheration Lewis has begun actually difficult.
"You could altercate that Lewis was arch and amateur the best in the antecedent set of regulations. He actually begins active the cars additional nature.
"Lewis would set up the car so that, as the [rear of the] car came up [during braking] and you acquired pitch, it would advise you about-face the car, and he relied on those elements. And that was how you generated achievement in the antecedent set of regulations.
"He has struggled added with the way these cars run. These cars you charge to run lower, you charge to run stiffer, they are banging into the arena more, you haven't got as abundant movement in the belvedere from low to aerial speed."
Continuing a legacy
Hamilton's bequest with Mercedes is about added than on-track achievement and breaking records. He has led an advance for added assortment and admittance - not aloof at Mercedes but in F1 as a whole.
As F1's alone atramentous driver, and its best acclaimed figure, Hamilton has an altered platform and has been bent to use it for good.
"The affair I am best appreciative of," Hamilton says, "when I anticipate about what I leave behind, I achievement in an absolute way, is the assignment we accept done with assortment and inclusion.
"From the aboriginal moment sitting bottomward with Toto, him and the accomplished aggregation actuality open-minded. They accept all gone on assortment and admittance courses.
"We accept an actual assorted aggregation now, which is article I am actually beholden to accept been an allotment of.
"I said to Toto: 'When I leave the team, there is activity to be no-one in the allowance accepting these air-conditioned conversations with you, because I am the one, and I achievement you abide them.' And he said he would."
Wolff says: "He was actually addition who gave impulses and afflicted things and did things.
"Mercedes knows its albatross on the capacity of assortment and angry racism or antisemitism. That has been consistently article we were actually targeting, and this is the albatross of the accumulation also.
"When he came, we were attractive at things from altered angles and altered perspectives he provided to us."
Among added changes, Mercedes has instigated a programmed alleged Accelerate 25, which demands that 25% of all new hires appear from an under-represented background.
"His access will accept larboard enduring marks on our team," Shovlin says. "Not aloof the assignment he has done announcement assortment in this aggregation and added broadly aural F1. But aloof the ethics he has, how he goes about his work, his commitment. He’s actual accessible and honest with his affecting side.
"It’s been a blaze that he had the activity to always do that. Because that wasn't article, he could aloof say: 'I've got an abundant idea, let's do this.' It has taken a lot of his activity over the years to always advance this capacity up the agenda."
'It is hopefully not an afire of a bridge'
The accord ends on an apricot note. There has been no eighth title, no animus for Abu Dhabi 2021, and the success has broiled up.
But the achievements remain, indelible, undeniable.
Wolff says: "How does it feel to not accomplish the eighth for him? He adapted it, and we would accept admired it to be with us, with Mercedes. But at affection we apperceive that we've had the best antagonism disciplinarian in the apple in our cars for so abounding years.
"We are activity to feel affecting at the end of that weekend. Sunday night, I can already visualize how that is activity to feel, but it is not like he is activity, and he is out of our world. He's not.
"Lewis Hamilton will be actual abundant actuality as a competitor, not any added on the aforementioned team, but still addition I am activity to accommodate at home, who is activity to appear for banquet and will accept a babble and comedy about with my son, and that is not activity to change. It is aloof an adventure with Mercedes that's ending."
Hamilton adds: "One of the hardest genitalia of the accommodation was back you are an allotment of the Mercedes aggregation you are allotment of the ancestors forever. I don’t anticipate that will change. We accept all formed so hard, it is hopefully not an afire of a bridge. I anticipate it will aftermost the analysis of time."
