Lewis Hamilton admits that he “didn’t know how tough it was” to adapt to life at a Ferrari before moving from Mercedes.
12 years after Mercedes, Hamilton made the shocking decision to join Ferrari for the 2025 F1 season.
In 2024, Ferrari enjoyed the best campaign for over a decade, winning the race for Constructors’ Champion McLaren.
As a result, there was much to be expected of the Hamilton Ferrari partnership as part of the new campaign.
Ultimately, the SF-25 struggles with the overall pace and is not meeting expectations.
Hamilton struggles to make Charles Leclerc better, and only shows a flash of glow on sprint weekend.
Prior to the Emilia Romana Grand Prix, Hamilton was open about how challenging it was.
“I joined the team before, so I thought it would be very difficult,” Hamilton said as Motorsport.com quoted.
“I came with a really open mind. I didn’t know how difficult it was. I knew it would be challenging. It’s challenging in all respects.”
Ferrari’s poor start to the year means sitting 152 points ahead of McLaren in the Constructors Championship.
Assessing whether Ferrari has any hope for this year’s title, Hamilton said: “Championship? There’s still a long way to go.
“From all experience, you have to assume that you are not necessarily fighting for a championship victory with a car that is against a very dominant car when you are over 100 points at this point in the season.
“But things can turn around and I’ve never seen it happen.”
Will Ferrari upgrades save you the season?
After six fly away races, all 10 teams are expected to introduce significant upgrades as F1 is currently in Europe.
Ferrari plans to introduce new parts in the next few races. The Spanish Grand Prix is heading in the most important direction for the rest of the season.
In Spain, the FIA introduces more stringent testing around the front wing.
This could affect the order of competition, with Red Bull claiming that McLaren will be hit hardest.
“At this point, I don’t know if I’ll get 1/10, 0.5 seconds or seconds by the end of the season,” explained Hamilton.
“We want to get closer to those things, and as I said, at this point we can’t close the doors to any idea. We have to raise our eyes and heads. We have to stay vigilant.
“That’s still a weekend goal, and now, when I’m sitting with the engineer, it’s a way to win this weekend.
“If we can extract a little more from the tires, a little more from the floor, if we can pull out half of each, then we can probably get there.”