Lewis Hamilton's surprise confession about early days at Ferrari
Lewis Hamilton has admitted that the early days at Ferrari have been as challenging as they could be on all fronts. The 7x F1 world champion had shocked the world last season when he announced that he would be leaving Mercedes at the end of the year and moving to the Italian team.
The most successful driver in the sport moving to the most successful team was expected to be a potent combination. What added further credence to this thought was the fact that Ferrari almost won the Constructors' championship last season from McLaren. The 2025 F1 season has been far below the expectations that the pair would have set for themselves.
Even on the driving side, Lewis Hamilton has struggled to keep up with teammate Charles Leclerc. While the 7x F1 champion has excelled in the two sprint format races, the Grand Prix segment has not been kind. He's yet to finish ahead of his teammate and has out-qualified him only once.
Talking to Motorsport on the eve of the F1 Imola GP, Hamilton admitted that the challenge of joining a new team has been as hard as he could have expected. He said:
"I anticipated it would be very tough, because I've joined a team before. I came in with a really open mind. I didn't know how tough it was going to be. I knew it was going to be challenging. It's as challenging as it could ever be on all fronts."
When questioned if there was still a chance to put together a title run this season, Lewis Hamilton was a bit pessimistic in his response as he said:
"Championship? There's still a long, long way to go. From all the years of experience, when you're over 100 points behind at this point in the season, with a car that's up against a car that's quite dominant, you have to assume that you're not necessarily fighting for the win in the championship. But things could turn around. We've never seen that happen.”
Lewis Hamilton on Ferrari's focus of extracting every tenth
Unlike a few other teams, Ferrari is not bringing a major upgrade to the car this weekend, as the team is focusing on bringing some remedial stuff in Barcelona. Talking about where the focus is for the team this weekend, Lewis Hamilton expanded on how the approach right now is all about trying to extract the best possible result in the most efficient manner from the car. He said (via Motorsport):
“At the moment, I can't tell you whether we're going to gain full tenths, half a second, a second by the end of the season. We want to get closer to those things. And as I said, at the moment, we can't shut the door to any idea. We have to keep our eyes and our heads up. We have to stay vigilant. We have to push with the expectation and the goal of winning."
He added:
“That's still the goal of each weekend. Right now, when I'm sitting with the engineers, it's how are we going to win this weekend. If we can extract a little bit more from the tyres, if we can extract a little bit more from the floor, if every single one of us is able to pull out half a tenth each. Then, maybe we can just get there.”
The Imola GP is Lewis Hamilton's first Italian race as a Ferrari driver. There's certainly a boost for anyone who races at home with the team, but it would be interesting to see how competitive the car is to determine what the drivers can achieve this weekend.