Last Updated on May 20 2025, 10:14 am
In his seventh race weekend for Formula One’s most iconic team, Lewis Hamilton had his best outing since donning the red racing overalls. Whilst qualifying was a concern for Ferrari with neither car making it into the top ten, the race was a different story.
Hamilton had again been out qualified by his team mate as the pair started the Grand Prix in Imola P11 and P12. This year it has been Charles Leclerc who has understood the tyre degradation better than Hamilton, but in Emilia-Romagne this was all to change.
Lewis was able to continue further into the race without changing his tyres, whilst Charles Leclerc was concerned his pit stop was too early for him to manage “plan A.” As it so happened Hamilton benefitted from the same virtual safety car as did Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, all of whom made their first stop after Esteban Ocon’s Haas came to a standstill on track.
Hamilton finally beats Leclerc
With no intervention from Ferrari, Hamilton made the vital move on his team mate in the closing stages of the race to see him come home ahead of Leclerc for the first time this year in a Grand Prix. Much has been made of Lewis failing to “integrate” well in Maranello. There’s the language barrier for starters then the whole’s ‘don’t criticise Ferrari’ culture he has to get his head around.
Yet in his first race for the Scuderia in Italy, Hamilton did something rarely seen from their previous hero Michael Schumacher. He spoke a few learned phrases in Italian to the adoring tifosi, which were received with rapturous applause.
Hamilton is attempting something no other world champion since Schumacher has been able to do. Win a championship with the Scuderia, something neither Sebastian Vettel nor Fernando Alonso were able to do. Fernando came very close in 2012, but more chaos from the Ferrari strategy team meant he lost out to Vettel in final race of the season.
Sebastian Vettel’s best shots at doing a Schumacher for Ferrari were in 2017/18. During the first season, Vettel was at his very best but he was in a car much inferior to the Mercedes driven by Lewis Hamilton. Come 2018, the car was better and the race for champion was tight until the summer break, then Ferrari seemed Ito lose their way and Vettel made too many mistakes and so once again the championship went to Hamilton. Vettel did learn Italian and made a visible display of speaking the language of Ferrari both on team radio and when interviewed in the stadiums around the world.
F1 title race officially declared open after Verstappen remembers how to drive again
Lewis speaks Italian
Imola 2025 was on the whole relatively positive for Ferrari. In qualifying the SF-25 is miserable but comes alive with a full tank of fuel. Unfortunately, this will be a problem next weekend with Monaco’s myriad of slow corners which the current Ferrari car appears not to like. Leclerc of course won his home race last season, but a number of paddock soothsayers are suggesting he won’t be taking any silverware home come the race in the French Riviera.
Hamilton’s efforts in speaking Italian did not go unobserved as 1997 F1 champ, French speaking Jaques Villeneuve noted Lewis was the exception to the British rule. “Well, mostly for an English-speaking person because you guys never learn foreign languages!It’s tough, everyone speaking English!”
“But seriously, I don’t remember Schumacher doing that, making that effort, going out there,” added Villeneuve. “Seb [Vettel] did, but after how many races? His seventh race, and he’s already saying things in Italian. His accent wasn’t too bad!”
The Brits are infamous for their lack of languages learning, but as Villeneuve pointed out this is partly because most people want to practice and learn to speak English. Yet if Hamilton can pass muster in his Italian, he will crack most relationship issues he will find in Maranello.
Red Bull match Williams record
Prior to his arrival at Ferrari, ex-Scuderia boss and now CEO of F1, Stefano Domenicali, had insisted for Lewis to build solid relationships in Maranello, he would have to learn the language to “integrate.” Hamilton’s practiced words for the tifosi is not exactly learning the language, but neither were they pidgin Italian as he spoke with some fluency and panache.
Elsewhere max Verstappen’s win in Red Bull’s 400th Grand Prix appears to have cheered up the folk in Milton Keynes. This was Red Bull’s 124th since joining the F1 grid in 2005 with their maiden win not coming for four years until 2009. Since then the team have won a race every year except for in 2015. By comparison Ferrari went winless in 2014, 2016, 2020 and 2021.
Remarkably Red Bull are only the second F1 team to win their 400th race, a feat which Williams also pulled off back in 2001 at the French Grand Prix when the other Schumacher – Ralf – took the chequered flag and the winners trophy.
Without criticising the team publicly, Charles Leclerc is getting visibly more frustrated each weekend with the performance from Ferrari. Whether its failing to nail the setup of there car, dithering over strategy and team orders or just failing to eek out similar race distances in their tyre life, Leclerc claims its just “unacceptable.”
Leclerc downbeat concerns for factory
“I was saying before, it’s one of the races where you’ve got to race with the heart and put the elbows out a little bit,” the Monegasque driver said to Sky Sports. “When it’s like this you go very much on the limit, sometimes a little bit over. But when you are starting P11, as a driver I cannot accept the situation we are in.”
Hamilton however was super positive stating after the race and claimed it was he who had ‘fixed’ a problem with the car: “I did think we would make an improvement this weekend with something I’ve fixed. And I think there is more to come,” the 40-year-old said. “The set-up was really good, the car felt really mega and the team did a fantastic job on strategy and pit stops. It was a lot of pressure on us with struggling through the year with the car so far, and particularly with our qualifying.
“I don’t remember the last time I had a race like that moving forwards. I’m sure there was one last year but this was different because I’m in the red car. To finally have that connection, that synergy with the car, was a really great feeling,” concluded Hamilton.
Hamilton’s last win in Monaco was back in 2019 but with the FIA mandating each driver must complete two pit stops during the Grand Prix, the element of unpredictability will be increased. Last year for the first time in F1 history, the top ten drivers finished the race in exactly the position they started it in.
Piastri reacts to Imola result
Villeneuve SLAMS McLaren dithering
The 2025 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix at Imola provided another gripping chapter in the ongoing story of Formula One, and once again it was McLaren’s internal politics that were in the spotlight. With the race under a safety car on lap 49 of 63, Lando Norris, running third, sent out a calm but pointed message on the radio about the rapidly deteriorating tyres of his team-mate Oscar Piastri.
The comment wasn’t aggressive, nor was it an outright demand to be let through. But what followed – or rather what didn’t – sparked a fierce debate about team orders, strategy and the limits of loyalty in a title-winning campaign.
Former world champion Jacques Villeneuve minced no words in his assessment. For him, McLaren’s decision to keep their cars in position at this crucial stage of the race was a clear display of fear – a failure of tactical clarity that ultimately cost Norris a chance of victory and may have deeper implications for the team’s season-long ambitions…. 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.
