Seven-time world champion, Lewis Hamilton arrived at Ferrari this season carrying much more than his titles, he took with him the weight of expectations and the desire to prove that he can still reinvent himself. The most successful driver in the history of F1 tries to rewrite his history in the most traditional and winning team in motorsport.
Hamilton made important career decisions. In 2012, he left the British McLaren — the team that designed him for F1 and where he won his first world title — and went to the German Mercedes. The move seemed risky, but it gave rise to one of the most successful partnerships in the sport: there were six titles in the drivers’ championship (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020) and seven in the constructors’ championship (2014 to 2020).
At Ferrari, however, the formula does not seem to be repeated. The athlete has his worst performance in F1 so far in the Italian team. The highlight of the Briton’s season was the victory in the sprint — the shorter race on Saturday — held in China, in March.
As of 2025, Hamilton has not been on the podium once in Grand Prix. There are 20 races outside the top 3 — a number that surpasses the mark of Frenchman Didier Pironi, Ferrari driver in 1981 and 1982, who needed 18 races to finish on the podium. This is the longest podium streak for an athlete for the Maranello team.
The sequence of results below expectations was reflected in Hamilton’s statements. In Hungary, in July, for example, he finished 12th and described himself as “useless”, suggesting that the team look for a new driver. In Belgium in August, he called his performance “definitely a weekend to forget”.
Part of the Briton’s frustrations are due to the limitations of the car, the SF-25, added to the team’s technical decisions. In Imola, in May, the athlete compared the inconsistency of the brakes to a “lottery”. In Canada in June, he commented that the car “didn’t want to turn” in low-speed curves. In Azerbaijan, in September, he said he was not confident in deceleration when he applied the brakes. Complaints about tire degradation and lack of grip also appeared at other times during the season.
Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur admitted having underestimated the challenge of Hamilton’s adaptation. “It was a huge change for Lewis in terms of culture, in terms of people around him, in terms of software, in terms of the car, in terms of any topic. It was a huge change that perhaps we underestimated, Lewis and I,” he said.
Ferrari is not going through a good phase – a fact that has also been confirmed by Charles Leclerc, his teammate. “I don’t really know how to reverse this situation, because we don’t have new parts or anything for the car,” the Monegasque told F1 in October in Singapore.
“We took steps forward [no começo da temporada]but the others also did, so the difference remained practically the same, and so Red Bull took two steps forward in the season. Now Mercedes seems to have taken that step forward and we are the only ones who haven’t found that solution,” said Leclerc.
McLaren, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, secured the constructors’ title with six races to spare and already has 713 points this year. Ferrari, in second place, has 356, but has no gap in the rankings with other teams. Mercedes is just one point behind. Red Bull, in fourth place, has a disadvantage of just ten points in relation to the Italian team.
In Hamilton’s first season in F1 in 2007, at McLaren, the driver won four races and reached the podium eight other times, totaling 109 points in the season – with a different scoring system than the current one. The following year, he won his first world title. When he debuted at Mercedes in 2013, he repeated a solid cycle: he achieved five podiums, including one victory, and scored 189 points.
Hamilton arrives at Interlagos in sixth place in the drivers’ championship, with 146 points — 64 behind Leclerc, who occupies fifth place. The Briton’s best result so far was coming fourth in four races – Emilia Romagna, Austria, England and the United States.
For the seven-time champion, the dream of bringing the world title to Maranello, which has been on hold for almost two decades, continues in 2026, when new technical regulations come into force.
