Lewis Hamilton’s turbulent start to life at Ferrari has become one of Formula 1’s most debated storylines of 2025. Fourteen races into the season, the seven-time world champion has just a sprint victory in China to his name, and remains without a Grand Prix podium in Maranello red. For some observers, his struggles point to a deeper decline. For others, they are simply the painful growing pains of a driver adjusting to new machinery and new surroundings.
Among the more sobering assessments is that of former F1 driver and Sky analyst Anthony Davidson, who believes Hamilton’s difficulties stem back to the 2022 regulation reset. The introduction of ground-effect cars, with underfloor tunnels generating most of the downforce, has demanded a new style that Davidson feels Hamilton has never fully mastered.
“Since the new regulations came in, Lewis has never been quite the same,” Davidson reflected. “I sometimes see glimpses of the old Lewis, but he hasn’t had that instinctive control in the car anymore.” This is now evident following his much lauded move to Ferrari that was supposed to give Hamilton a reset.
No Ferrari reset for Lewis
There’s been no reset. For the third time in four seasons, Lewis is again being repeatedly beaten in qualifying (4-10) and in the race (2-12) by his team mate, but this time its Charles Leclerc and not George Russell. Davidson also addressed the “elephant in the room” after Hamilton’s miserable performance at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
“This is just another hurdle that he’s having to overcome and I don’t mind saying it because it’s the elephant in the room, and I’ve been there myself as a driver, age is a factor as well. I feel like this is a time of reflection for him, as an athlete ages, it does [affect performance],” Davidson told Sky F1. “Whatever anyone says, even himself, others that are very involved with Lewis, fans, they won’t understand where I’m coming from, but I’ve lived and breathed it as an athlete. I’m now retired at 46.”
The seven times champion had exited qualifying before the pole position shoot out in both the Sprint and the Grand Prix Hungarian Grand Prix. Hamilton branded himself “useless” while teammate Charles Leclerc stormed to pole, epitomised the gap between Hamilton’s reputation and his current output. For Davidson, it is a troubling sign not just for the driver but for Ferrari as a team. He even likened the situation to Valentino Rossi’s ill-fated MotoGP switch to Ducati, a cautionary tale of how even the greatest can falter as time goes by.
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Palmer says its just “fine margins”
Yet not everyone agrees with this diagnosis. Jolyon Palmer, former Renault driver and F1TV analyst, isn’t convinced by the narrative that Hamilton is “finished.” For him, the story of 2025 has been one of fine margins compounding into messy results.
Hamilton currently sits sixth in the standings on 109 points, with only two scoreless Sundays — a disqualification in China and a Hungary disaster — to his name. The larger bruises have come in qualifying, where near-misses have snowballed into headlines. At Silverstone, he looked set to outpace Max Verstappen for pole until a scruffy final corner cost him dearly. At Spa, time was on the table before oversteer at Stavelot and a Sprint spin unraveled his weekend, followed by a deleted lap in qualifying. In Budapest, Leclerc found the sweet spot just as Hamilton lost it. These were tenths, not chasms.
“We’re just not used to Lewis making these sorts of mistakes,” Palmer explained, adding that the one-lap pressure is magnifying every slip. He argues that if those tiny details swung the other way, the results would look far less “abject” for a driver of Hamilton’s calibre.
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2026 cars may revive Hamilton’s fortunes
Whether its age, a dislike of the ground effect F1 cars or merely a time of settling in for Hamilton at Ferrari, the weight of expectation on the former champion is not diminishing. Should Lewis continue without a podium finish up to the US Grand Prix in Austin, he will have erased the unwanted record of the Ferrari driver going the longest after joining the team without a top three finish.
Both perspectives acknowledge the unique challenge of Ferrari. The weight of the badge, the expectation from fans, and the relentless comparison with Leclerc all amplify Hamilton’s every lap. Palmer stresses that thriving in red doesn’t always mean titles — Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel both won races at Maranello without sealing championships. He believes Hamilton can reach that level, and that victories will come once Saturdays are cleaned up and the adaptation period passes.
Davidson remains less convinced, pointing back to the systemic discomfort Hamilton has shown with this generation of cars. Yet even he admits a reset could arrive with the fresh power unit regulations in 2026. Gone will be the Venturi channeled underfloor’s as the ground effect downforce will be significantly reduced and it cold be this is in reality the key that will spark a revival from the once dominant champion.
No wins in Zandvoort for Lewis
Between Davidson’s caution and Palmer’s optimism lies the real story: Hamilton’s Ferrari chapter is not yet defined. Whether history remembers it as a decline or a rebirth may depend on whether he can turn those fine margins into results — and prove that flashes of the old Lewis can still become the full picture.
F1 returns this weekend to sand dunes of Zandvoort for the 2025 Grand Prix of the Netherlands. This is one of few circuits where Hamilton has never won, his best being a close second when the circuit returned to the F1 calendar in 2021. Its difficult to predict how Ferrari will come out of the box for Friday practice, although McLaren boss Andreas Stellar believes they will be the team to beat over the final ten race weekends of the year.
Reflecting on Leclerc’s performance in Budapest, the McLaren boss said: “I think we saw [in Qualifying] that they were in condition to score the pole position, and [in the race], it’s not like in the first stint we were holding back. We were trying to go as fast as possible, and Leclerc was managing the lead of the race with some degree of control.”
He continued: “I think Ferrari [are] going to be a contender for victories for the remainder of the season. Definitely, anytime we [are] racing for the second part of the season, we would have to take into account that in Qualifying and in the race, we would have to deal with Ferrari.”
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Re. Hamilton. Doesn’t anyone get it….its not the car, OR the previous one. Hamiltons problem is the theft of that world championship that he was cheated out of by the so called governing body of formula 1 to juice things up. They obviously thought it was getting boring with him winning all the time so they altered the rules for one race at his expense. How would anyone else feel under the same circumstance’s. Deep down he knows what happened and has just lost interest in the human race but will carry on taking millions of pounds because he can. If it was red bull being cheated all hell would have broke loose but nobody helped Hamilton so he’s just given up. Why go flat out and risk your life under those circumstances.