Hamilton’s Ferrari journey takes a turn for the worst, as history begins to repeat itself with the Italian media.
Whilst the headlines from the 2024 Formula One season, were that McLaren broke a 26 year wait for the constructors’ trophy and Verstappen became just one of four drivers in F1 history to claim four consecutive drivers’ titles, the long divorce between Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton was never far from the surface.
Hamilton arrived in Maranello to a fanfare laid on by Ferrari and local police in the town declared a ‘state of emergency’ calling in officers from other regions to police the expected mass crowds arriving to see Ferrari’s latest world champion driver.
Known for his love of whacky fashion, Lewis was impeccably dressed sporting a striped navy three-piece suit designed by iconic fashion brand Ferragamo. Toto Wolff later joked that Hamilton had been with Mercedes for twelve years and repeatedly refused to wear a suit, but for Ferrari he scrubbed up on day one.
Hamilton making big cultural adjustment
For most of his career, Lewis has been top dog in both teams for which he raced, even challenging the newly crowned double world champion, Fernando Alonso in his rookie year with McLaren. Whilst honours were fairly even between Nico Rosberg and the seven times world champion, Lewis tenure at Mercedes saw him attain ‘legend’ like status within the team, at times even daring to challenge his boss in public.
Yet Mercedes are really a modern day Formula One team with only a brief dabble in the sport as a works team in the 1950’s before a horrific accident at Le Mans in 1955, which killed more than 80 spectators, saw the German brand withdraw from all forms of motorsport.
Ferrari by comparison is the godfather of the Formula One teams. They were there in 1950 at Silverstone for the inaugural F1 Grand Prix and are the oldest team who have won more than any other and are the only competitor to have entered every one of the FIA F1 championships.
The Scuderia built a formidable reputation under the leadership of founder Enzo Ferrari and today much of the culture and respect he brought to operations in Maranello remain. Each engineer no matter how lowly knows the motto adopted by Enzo that “Not a single person is bigger than Ferrari,” as Sebastian Vettel revealed to Das Spiegal in 2019.
Enzo’s motto remains. “No one is bigger than Ferrari”
When asked about the decision that Vettel should leave the team, Pierro, son of Enzo repeated the motif: “I don’t know how my father would have handled it, but he always said: “No employee is bigger than the team, not even the best driver.”
Ferrari folk law has numerous examples of how Enzo was also dismissive of his drivers preferring the focus to be on the team and the wonderful racing cars they were building. Double world champion with the Lotus team who Enzo once despised, Emerson Fittipaldi, was invited to Firorano to test for Ferrari.
To the his surprise, Enzo merely discussed Brazilian beach babes with him during the day. Fitipaldi later learned this was the kind of small talk Enzo would have with potential drivers and was designed to emphasis the importance of the cars and the small part their pilots played in the success of Ferrari.
Of course much of the autocratic nature of how the team was run is markedly different today, but the ghost of Enzo lives on and so do the Ferrari traditions of respecting the team and the cars. To fail to do so may lead to peril as Alain Prost was to discover in 1991.
Ferrari sack Prost for dissent
The French quadruple F1 champion had joined Ferrari in 1990 and completed a strong season finishing close behind the victor Ayrton Senna. Prost won five Grand Prix for Ferrari but his 1991 became somewhat of a public joke. Even in the hands of ‘the professor’ the car was unresponsive and slow with Prost finally airing his frustration as the chequered flag fell at the ultimate race of the year.
Ferraro had refused Prost’s request to start the Spanish Grand Prix on slicks, “If I’d had them, I could have won,” fumed the French driver to the media after the race – while at the proceeding Grand Prix in Japan, the shock absorbers failed on his unloved 643, leading Prost to tell reporters that his car had been “like a horrible truck to drive.” These two comments were enough to see Prost summarily dismissed and almost as a Micky take, Claudio Lombardi recruited Gianni Morbidelli from minnow F1 team Minardi, to complete the last round of the year in Prost’s car down under in Australia.
Since the halcyon days of Michael Schumacher, Ferrari have mostly suffered in the F1 wilderness. Following the retirement of the seven tines F1 champion, Ferrari brought in Kimi Raikkonen who returned the favour by winning the last of their driver championships.
The iconic F1 team turned to Fernando Alonso in 2010 in what appeared to be an inspired choice of driver. The Spaniard wrestled back a 47-point deficit on Sebastian Vettel and lead the drivers’ title race come Korea. In Abu Dhabi Ferrari made a disastrous pit stop call for Fernando, which saw his third world title stolen as he remained stuck behind Vitali Petrov.
Alonso warned by Montezemolo
Alonso was in with another great chance in 2012, despite not having a car quicker than the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel. He narrowly missed out again in Abu Dhabi and the mutual respect between Fernando and the team was to take a tour for the worse.
Following a poor qualifying session in Singapore Ferrari’s technical director told assembled media, “the [qualifying] result reflects our current potential”, after Alonso was just fifth, “but in order to be where we wanted and where we were capable of being, we needed to be perfect today and we weren’t.”
This was classic Ferrari management speak when wishing to criticise their drivers and when Alonso was informed he flew into a rage. “I want my 1.2 million followers to know that the key aerodynamic components at the rear of the Ferrari are still the same as they were in May”. It apparently required a lot of persuasion to prevent the Spaniard from pressing ‘send’ on his phone.
Later another spat became public between Alonso and the team. Having pontificated in public over who should be his team mate in 2013, Ferrari godfather Luce de Montezemolo was reported as saying: “Alonso should first win the title and we will then consider not putting a driver beside him who will bother him”.
Italian press are key to all that is Ferrari
The relationship between Ferrari and Alonso remained strained until he was replaced in 2015 by another world champion Sebastian Vettel. The ex-Red Bull driver was far more politically correct during his lack lustre Ferrari career although his only real two chances at winning titles came in 2017/18 when he was neck and neck with Lewis Hamilton starting the final seven race weekends of the year.
On both occasions Hamilton eased away to claim a comfortable victory for his 4th and 5th F1 championships. There have been few public divisions between Ferrari and their drivers in the last decade and the accepted practice is that drivers do not slag off Ferrari, not do they criticise the cars they are given. This is the job of the Italian media, who have been King makers and deal breakers in Ferrari’s choice of drivers over the years.
After the debacle in China where both drivers were disqualified the press in Italy responded in outrage. The leading publications called the debacle a “disaster”and called out the “amateurish” operations of the trackside team, whilst sympathising with Hamilton and Leclerc for having to suffer the ordeal.
The first signs that Lewis Hamilton had overstepped the mark in terms of criticising Ferrari, was following his disappointing performance in Japan. He claimed his car did not have the same parts as his team mates and used this to excuse his lack lustre efforts when compared to those of his team mate, something at which the Italian media were not amused.
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Headlines in Italy not good for Hamilton
Hamilton has visibly been retrained on his views of the SF-25 he is driving both in Bahrain and now in Saudi Arabia. His explanations for being repeatedly slower than Leclerc are now focused around the difficulties he is finding in the switch from IC breaks to Brembo and how learning to drive for a new dream, is harder than he first thought.
Come the Jeddah qualifying sessions, Lewis was again on the back foot, scraping through into the top ten shootout and then clocking a best time over 0.6s slower than his team mate, who starts the race in P4. Hamilton is in P7, just three milliseconds ahead of Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda and the Italian press is now having their say.
“Even rookies like Ollie Bearman at Haas have needed less time to adapt,” Corriere della Sera declares, “and that is causing embarrassment inside and outside Maranello”. The newspaper’s headline shouts “From promises to doubts,” with reference to the expectations when Hamilton joined the team and now his narrative that the car is “more complicated” to learn than he expected.
The fact that Carlos Sainz has now made the transition and is settled in his new Williams team is discussed. Along with the fact the ex-Ferrari driver has beaten his team mate Alex Albon in the last two qualifying outings.
Lewis ‘gone by December’
For the first time since his arrival in Maranello, there are those who are questioning whether Hamilton’s tenure will be short lived despite his two year contract with the team. High profile former Ferrari chief engineer Luigi Mazzola tells Sky Italia Hamilton’s start to 2025 is reminiscent of Sebastian Vettel’s ill fated last two seasons in red.
“Leclerc is like (Max) Verstappen,” Mazzola said. “He can handle a difficult car. It’s his driving style.” The implication is that for three years at Mercedes this was not the case for Hamilton and now his hopes that switching teams would give him a reset are fading fast.
Hamilton will likely struggle in Jeddah from his lowly start of seventh, whilst should anything happen ahead Leclerc in fourth, a podium is on the cards for Ferrari. Lewis will need to take time off and reflect as F1 takes a break next weekend. But the glory heaped upon him after the Sprint win in China, is turning quickly to debating whether the seven times champion will even see out his contract.
Unlike the world champions recruited before him to Ferrari, Hamilton is clearly second best to his team mate from the very start. The move to Ferrari and the power of the Italian press has now muted on the whole the Hamilton-esque type outbursts seen previously at Mercedes. It could be without a platform to air his woes, Lewis merely fades from the F1 picture, rather than ending with a glorious title for the Scuderia.
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Whilst Red Bull are not having the start to the season they had hoped for, after four rounds and just one race win Max Verstappen is within touching distance of the leader Lando Norris. His eight point deficit to the McLaren driver is the result of the Woking based team having two drivers taking points from each other, although in Bahrain Max’s P6 appeared to cause a drama in the Red Bull garage.
Raymond Vermeulen was seen giving Red Bull’s chief advisor an eyeful following the chequered flag last weekend tearing into Dr. Helmut Marko before storming away. The early paddock theories were that this was due to another lack lustre weekend from the RB21 which in the hands of the world champion could manage just P7 in qualifying, some 6/10ths slower than pole sitter Oscar Piastri.
Worse was to come race day on Sunday, as Verstappen quickly moved up to sixth on the fourth lap. His pit stop to shed the quickly degrading soft tyre on lap ten was a catastrophe and the sign of things to come as the Bahrain Grand Prix unfolded… READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
