Ferrari team principal Fred Vasser fought back against questions about Lewis Hamilton’s form early in the 2025 F1 season.
Hamilton’s life at Ferrari continued at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, with seven-time world champions qualified for the seventh time, 31 seconds behind teammate Charles Leclair, taking the team’s first podium.
Aside from the impressive pole position and victory in the Chinese sprint race, Hamilton is in a disappointing form in his second appearance at Ferrari.
Asked how Hamilton’s form fell “dramatically,” Basser said, “It’s not dramatic. We’ve done five races so far. I’d like to have a big headline tomorrow, “Fred said this.”
“But this is f****** b****t. At the end of the day, we are competing. You have ups and downs.
“We’re not the world champions when we have. When we’re down, we’re not anywhere. It’s just a competition.”
Hamilton was persuasively outperformed by Leclerc, finishing seventh in the drivers’ championship, 68 points behind Prime Minister Oscar Piastri, who has already claimed his third victory in five races in Jeddah.
“I don’t know if he’ll make the same conclusion as Max when he was seventh last week. That’s right. The competition is close,” Vasser said.
“You have 10 cars and a tenth of them. Look at Max. He won in Japan. He finished 30 seconds from Piastri in Bahrain and had pole position in P2 in Saudi Arabia.
“We need to stay calm. We can do whatever you want. I don’t want to worry about you. We have to work in stages, at least as a team.
“I think I paid off last year by doing 100 seconds and 100 seconds, but we need to maintain the same approach.
“We’re not going to be the guy who says we’re world champions or we’re nowhere. We’re a team. We struggle with the weekends. We get good results on the weekends. We have to improve and settle each step at a time.”
Fred Vaserte defended Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton was heading for a “painful” season
Hamilton described his race in Saudi Arabia as “terrifying” and admitted that the 2025 season looked “painful.”
“From today there’s nothing positive,” Hamilton said.
“It was horrifying, it was totally fun. I was just slipping, and it’s pretty bad.
“I don’t know how long I’ve been struggling, but it definitely hurts, I just try to improve it every week.
“There’s no correction at this point, so this is how it will be for the rest or year. It will be painful.
“In qualifying, we extracted performances and in the race we tried everything, but the car didn’t want to be faster.”
Vasseur claimed that Hamilton would receive full support from Ferrari.
“I’ll be 2000% behind him,” he added. “I’ll give him support. I’ll start tomorrow morning and try to find a solution and a reason, and work on it early in the morning.
“But honestly, I’m not too worried, and if you look at what he did in China, what he did in the race in Bahrain last week, or what he did in the first part of this weekend’s session, there’s certainly a possibility.
“We need to balance because we are collectively Lewis and us.
“It’s kind of a negative place, but I think there’s a car potential out there. We’re going to try and solve that.”