The marriage made in heaven, the wedding of two global brands – Ferrari and seven times F1 champion Lewis Hamilton – has started badly. One of the parties has failed on its vows to deliver a chariot par excellence for the bog occasion whilst the other is bitching with the bridesmaids about how their charge is not performing as expected.
The ever iconic Ferrari F1 team has in modern times become known almost equally for its Italian style chaos as it is for the historic glory enjoyed during the days of its founding father Enzo. Lewis Hamilton in a way was forced to take on the poisoned chalice which has seen off multiple work champions Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel given his shelf life at Mercedes was rapidly coming to an end.
Having been beaten by team mate George Russell in two of their seasons together, Lewis was hoping for a long term driving contract to see out his F1 career at Brackley together with a ten year Mercedes ambassadorial role with around $250m. Yet Stuttgart who control the Mercedes brand were not playing ball and the team which is independently run by Toto Wolff offered Lewis the measly security of a one year guaranteed contract for 2024.
Ferrari huge gamble fails
Talk about being smacked in the face by a wet fish!!! So in reality, Ferrari was Hamilton’s only hope of the elusive eighth drivers’ title but it always came at a risk. The winning machine that was once Ferrari under Enzo and Jean Todt is a small shadow of its former glories and those running the various departments of the Maranello operations appear in fear of failing this grand legacy.
Ferrari took an enormous gamble this year in deciding to build a completely different car more 2025 than the one which was quickest at the end of 2024. Over the final six Grand Prix weekends of last year, Ferrari slashed a McLaren lead in the constructors’ championship from 75 to just 14 points. One more race weekend and the McLaren dream of its first title in 26 years would have likely been crushed.
“We are in the fourth year of applying these regulations and we know our previous project very well,” said Vasseur. “That is why the 2025 car will be completely new.” He added that the 2025 Ferrari “will share less than 1 percent” with its predecessor that was raced by Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc last season.
Really??? The final year of the current regulations and Ferrari take such a huge risk and consume an enormous amount of resources which could have been focused on 2026. Next year will see the biggest regulatory change in F1 history where both chassis and power units will be radically different and there are suggestions already that the likes of Sauber and Aston Martin will not develop this year’s car any further, but focus on the massive challenge ahead for 2026.
Lewis has an air of resignation
In a way Hamilton arriving in Maranello for 2025 has masked the feeble efforts of F1’s once greatest team and his Sprint win at the second round in China created a false optimism that has since failed to transpire. The risk for Lewis was that if he called out the shambolic mess which is evident in both the design office and the trackside team, is the Italian media would turn on him as they have done repeatedly with drivers who criticise the legendary Scuderia.
There were signs of this ‘turning on Hamilton’ following his comments in Japan, where he suggested for the first three race weekends of the year his car was somehow different and inferior to the one Charles Leclerc was driving. “Through the first three races, there’s been a bit of a deficit between both sides of the garage, on an element of the car, so on my side, something underperforming,” said Lewis post the Japanese Grand Prix.
“Even rookies like Ollie Bearman at Haas have needed less time to adapt,” declared Corriere della Sera, “and that is causing embarrassment inside and outside Maranello”. The newspaper’s headline exclaimed “From promises to doubts,” with reference to the high expectations when Hamilton joined Ferrari but with his narrative shift that the car is “more complicated” to learn than he expected, the Italian media made the obvious comparisons to other drivers starting the year with new teams and how much better they were fairing.
Since Japan, Hamilton has reigned in his criticism of the car and the team, giving downbeat assessments of where he is with the SF-25 presently. Such was his miserable mood in Miami, his FIA press day interviews were described in various quarters of the paddock as “monosyllabic.”
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Ferrari strategy delays unacceptable
The came the row during the Grand Prix over team radio. Hamilton on the quicker softer tyre benefited from the safety car and found himself just three seconds behind his team mate. Lewis closed the gap at just under a second a lap and questioned what the team’s plans were when he arrived on the tail of his team mate.
In his usual message boy style, race engineer Ricciardo Adami answered Hamilton’s query with the standard line he’s been using since the days of Sebastian Vettel, “we’ll get back to you.” You never hear Bono, Hamilton’s old race engineer, or Gianpiero Lambiase who is the voice in Verstappen’s ear mutter anything as facile as this.
And so the inevitable debate over Ferrari’s inability to react quickly with strategy calls began there and then. Given they had three laps where Lewis was hunting down his team mate at a rate of knots makes matters even worse. For almost five minutes Ferrari had the opportunity to discuss what to do when their drivers became nose to tail.
Embarrassed at the public humiliation his team had suffered, Fred Vasseur went to Hamilton’s ready room before he faced the media and was clearly irate. “Calm down” Hamilton told the subsequent press interviews were his word to the Ferrari boss whose own interviews sounded like he was in denial and speaking gobbledegook.
Hamilton’s positivity wins the day
Lewis of course was running the risk of the Italian media turning on him, yet his sun disposition and ‘no big deal’ explanations over the team radio row appeared to curry favour with the media.
“Firstly, I generally enjoyed the race – I think this weekend, whilst we’re not as quick as we want to be, I feel like I had a better weekend in general,” Hamilton said. “It might not show necessarily today, but starting 12th it was very hard to overtake here. I got onto the medium tyre and I felt the car really come alive and I felt super optimistic in that moment.”
“All I could see is a Mercedes ahead and I was thinking maybe we can get up to sixth or something, but we lost a lot of time in those laps [behind Leclerc]. I was clearly good for it in that moment, and I didn’t think the decision came quick enough. I have no problems with either team or with Charles, but I think we could do better,” was the blunt assessment delivered by Hamilton with a genuine smile on his face.
Jenson Button observed of Hamilton’s interviews and demeanour, “Yeah, we’re talking about communication in the car, but also communication in interviews, he came across really well, didn’t he Lewis, compared to the rest of the team.”
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Italian press back Hamilton in Ferrari row
This is now reflected in the Italian media’s assessment of Ferrari’s latest F1 outing with La Gazzetta dello Sport noting that Ferrari are floundering by comparison to their rivals last year. “152 points behind McLaren in the constructors’ standings. A disappointment,” the Italian report began.
In somewhat poetic fashion, the writer continues to wax lyrical. “Instead we find ourselves having to think about why we will talk about it (unless there are revolutions not on the horizon now) next year. What went wrong? Since the post-Binotto era, Maranello had granted itself an almost unlimited credit line. “Let Vasseur cook,” the mantra. What happened? Wrong ingredients or does the chef need to brush up on Masterchef?”
The debate then shifted somewhat towards Lewis’ relationship with Ferrari and the future potential. “Hamilton remains a question mark: maybe Miami will be the start of the adaptation, but he is the greatest (at least that’s what the numbers say) and something big is expected. The doubt is that this marriage (which, it must be said, is good for F1) sees at present the couple as not getting on.”
Corriere della Sera’s assessment is more scathing and looks to the recent decade of similar Ferrari failures. “Hamilton accuses the red team of being unresponsive in making decisions, a chronic problem which can easily be found in previous management with Binotto and Arrivabene. It always seems that before making a choice, a bureaucratic situation worthy of our country is activated, aimed only at wasting time. Lewis figured it out and it didn’t take long before he sang four to a sleeping team.”
Can Lewis wake the sleeping giant?
The “four” reference is a golfing term where a player shouts desperately to warn others of an impending disaster as a golf ball hurtles towards the unexpecting spectators.
There are various debates amongst the Italian F1 writers as to where the root of the problem lies. The latest report suggests the so far bullet proof Fred Vasseur is being compared to his failed and sacked predecessors, which is not a good thing. Hamilton for now is being allowed as an outsider to criticise the precious Ferrari Formula One works outfit.
This state of affairs will continue so long as Lewis is at least close to his team mate. For now his call for the team to “do better” will not be juxtaposed alongside his own lack lustre performances when compared to Leclerc, although should the dominant pecking order between the two Ferrari drivers remain, Hamilton will eventually become focused in the centre of the Italian media’s sights.
The hope is that Lewis can help turn things at Maranello around, although for now there’s little evidence Ferrari are improving in any shape of form at all.
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