Last Updated on August 10 2025, 12:25 pm
Lewis Hamilton had a weekend to forget at the last Formula One outing before the summer break. He failed to make it out of Q2 in qualifying and started and finished the Grand Prix in twelfth place. Hamilton publicly lambasted his won efforts, although there are some in the paddock who believe this was all for show.
‘How could the seven times champion now be useless?’ begins this premise. ‘Surely its got to be Ferrari who are the problem,’ swiftly comes the answer to the conspiracy theory. And there are indicators all is not well in Maranello with one grande of the Scuderia claiming his contacts within the team reveal “90% of engineers” didn’t want Hamilton signing.
Add to this that John Elkann was waxing lyrical in Budapest, reflecting on Ferrari’s former glory he attributed that distant success to the all individuals submitting to the team. Well clearly there’s no glory for Ferrari currently and the simple implication is that there’s disharmony back at HQ which is the reason for the team’s current plight.
Switching F1 teams is difficult
Hamilton is 10-4 down to his new team mate in qualifying this year and even worse the head to head in race finishes now sits at 12-2 in Leclerc’s favour. F1 broadcaster’s are now daring to address “the elephant in the room” as Anthony Davidson described in in Hungary, which addresses Hamilton’s age (40) and whether his once dominant powers are on the wane.
Yet in the modern era of Formula One, moving from one team to another is a bigger deal than in yesteryear. The powertrains from the various manufacturers all perform in different ways and the highly complex cars are engineered with significantly different solutions in ride and aerodynamics.
Carlos Sainz is an example of a driver switching teams the same year as Hamilton and despite him being a Grand Prix winner last season, he has struggled at Williams where he has switched to Mercedes power. Sainz has five zero points finishes this year so far, when the car has not been retired. Team mate Alex Albon by way of contrast has in the same comparison failed to score on just two occasions. Back in May the Spaniard revealed: “It is extremely demanding and a lot more difficult than what people think,” said Sainz. “I think some people think that we use it as a bit of an excuse when we change teams, but absolutely everything changes.
“It makes our life extremely demanding back in the simulator and in the factory trying to learn every possible thing about the car, especially when you have an experienced team mate in the team.”
Hamilton hates driving the simulator
Of course for Lewis Hamilton, the simulator has never been his happy place, as he revealed to Sky F1 in 2021. “I hardly ever drive on the simulator,” Hamilton told Sky Sports. “I maybe do 20 laps a year, maybe. I have no interest in the simulator.” The seven times world champion has said on previous occasions, the simulator makes him disorientated and given he is not part of the racing sim generation like Verstappen, Norris, Leclerc and Russell, this is understandable.
Yet given Sainz’s words, is Hamilton missing out on a tool which could help him get closer to his team mate? Then again, they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Regardless, Hamilton has at least one of his colleagues who is backing him to solve the Ferrari conundrum, as Juan Pablo Montoya explains on his MontoyAS podcast.
“Supposedly, during the race, the engineer’s approach to Lewis changed a lot, and he started giving him information, and Lewis’s pace improved a lot during the race. Every time Lewis starts to become more competitive, the Ferrari goes faster,” he noted. “The times were very close. Half a tenth faster is a different story. If you look at Lewis three or four months ago, he was half a second behind. He was a tenth behind Charles; everyone was there. And if you look at the car of Lewis, he’s not comfortable; he’s fighting with the car all the time,” Montoya continued.
In Hungary, Hamilton was half a tenth off his team mate in the first qualifying session, but come the moment of truth, in Q2 the gap was much larger, around a quarter of a second. This is why Lewis missed out on the top ten shootout.
“More complicated” will Leclerc’s life become
Montoya continues: “What’s happening is that Lewis is at a point where he wants to get the better of the car, and he’s putting in a huge effort, and you can tell he’s working really hard, but you can tell he’s not comfortable in the car, and the engineers haven’t understood. They’re starting to understand and realise, but they haven’t really grasped how difficult that car is.”
The Columbian racer believes Hamilton will continue to acclimatise to the Ferrari powertrain and the SF-25 and when he does, he will be a much bigger threat to Leclerc. “So I think the more Lewis adjusts the car and the more Lewis handles it, the more complicated Charles’s life will become. So far, it hasn’t been too complicated, but we’ll see.”
Despite reports in the Italian media that Hamilton is considering imminent retirement, Montoya rubbishes the idea. “This year, no. He gives it a few more years at least. Because the rules are so different from next year, and the regulations is so different, everything is so different, that the car could act very differently next year, and it could be something he likes and something that comes out on his side.”
Montoya’s solution, ‘the simulator’
Yet Montoya’s solution may not be palatable for the seven times champion who believes simulator work is key to solving the current issues. “The only way to solve this problem is if the car in the simulator behaves similarly, there is where they really have to put in work and look at things in the car that they have to work on,” was the verdict of Montoya.
Whilst Hamilton did win Ferrari’s first ever Sprint in China, he enters the summer break a distant 42 points behind his team mate. Further with fourteen race weekends and no Grand Prix podium, Hamilton is hurtling towards an unwanted record for a Scuderia driver, held by Didier Pironi, who went eighteen rounds after joining the team before claiming his first podium.
Verstappen ‘high praise’ from British media
Formula One has had a number of pantomime villains in its history and any driver who has gone on to dominate, risks alienating the public who wish to see exciting and unpredictable racing. Michael Schumacher was the first driver to win five driver titles in succession and towards the end of his era of domination with Ferrari he was regularly the subject of criticism.
Schumacher insisted to Ferrari that his whoever his team mate was must in fact be the number two driver and that any potential advantage be given to the German ace. Both Rubens Barrichello and Felipe Massa after him were forced to give up potential race wins and positions all in the Schumacher cause.
In the British F1 media Michael was frequently lambasted following his his ‘accidental’ collision with Damon Hill in Australia 1994, in which both drivers were forced to retire, preventing Hill from winning his first championship. Schumacher indeed had another ‘inglorious’ moment towards the end of his Ferrari career, when having notched provisional pole, he parked his car in the Rascasse corner in Monaco 2006, to prevent his arch rival Fernando Alonso from going quicker…. 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.
