MELBOURNE, Australia — Since taking his first steps around the grounds of Maranello in January and meeting his new teammates, Lewis Hamilton has soaked up every drop of what it means to be a Ferrari Formula One driver.
He’s engaged with the passionate ‘tifosi’ fanbase. He’s put on the famous race suit and stepped into the red car for the first time. The magic of Ferrari has exceeded all his expectations.
But arriving in Melbourne this week for the 2025 season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Hamilton and Ferrari know they are near a crucial point in the early days of their relationship. The race will provide the first true opportunity to see how the car performs, informing what on-track results may be possible this year and just how fruitful their new partnership could be.
After all of the hype that has grown around Hamilton and Ferrari for over a year, it’s finally showtime. Regardless of the outcome, this next chapter will be defining in the storied legacies of both Hamilton and Ferrari. And a lot rides on this first season.
The spotlight placed upon Hamilton in his first couple of months as a Ferrari driver has come as no surprise — least of all to the seven-time world champion himself.
“If you think about my brand and the brand of Ferrari, you knew it was going to make some sort (of impact),” Hamilton said at testing in Bahrain two weeks ago. “But of course I didn’t know how much talk there would be.”
Hamilton and Ferrari knew what they were getting with one another, sharing a commercial and cultural relevance that only enhanced their respective standings. They knew the first pictures of him, posed outside Enzo Ferrari’s farmhouse, would go viral. Even those with the most basic F1 knowledge would know what Hamilton racing for Ferrari means for the sport.
But the driving force behind Hamilton’s move is not increasing his already significant personal profile or brand. He retains the unshakeable belief that he still has what it takes to win a record-breaking eighth world championship, even at 40 — attempting to achieve that with Ferrari, F1’s most legendary team with an unparalleled legacy, ramps up the anticipation.
In the three and a half years since that night in Abu Dhabi in Dec. 2021, when a fumbling of the rule book by race director Michael Masi denied Hamilton an eighth title, the Briton has been through a lot. Mercedes, the team with whom he conquered F1, struggled with its car designs, meaning Hamilton dropped down the standings.
The emotional end to Hamilton’s two-and-a-half-year win drought at Silverstone last year brought relief, but it wasn’t a true reflection of his final season at Mercedes. Hamilton admitted toward the end of the season that he felt “just slow,” finishing 19-5 down to teammate George Russell in qualifying over the year.
The move to Ferrari gives Hamilton the chance to prove he remains capable of fighting for wins and championships.
Fred Vasseur, Ferrari’s team principal, has been unequivocal in his belief that Hamilton still has the pace, citing his charge through the field from 16th on the grid to finish fourth at the Abu Dhabi season finale. Hamilton’s rejuvenation and enthusiasm have been evident from his first days with Ferrari.
Whether the car is there for Hamilton to win a championship is another matter. Preseason testing started smoothly for Ferrari but an issue with the car on the final day denied Hamilton the chance to complete a full race simulation, meaning the first time he completes a lengthy distance will be his debut on Sunday. The lap times set by teammate Charles Leclerc one day earlier suggested Ferrari may be a step behind McLaren going into the new year, in a similar ballpark to Mercedes.
Hamilton was uncertain how Ferrari would compare to the opposition, instead focusing on his preparations, which he claimed “couldn’t have gone any better” given the short turnaround. “We’re taking it one day at a time,” he said. “We’re focused on doing our job, we’re not watching everything else.” He’s ready for the continued integration with the team over the coming months. “It’s going to be continuously evolving,” Hamilton said. “It has felt seamless, gelling with the team. We’ve not had to force it. I feel at home.”
There will come a point when that rate of evolution starts to plateau, and the expectation for results will arrive.
Hamilton is also not alone in his burning hunger to be the one to win Ferrari’s first drivers’ championship since 2007. Across the garage, Leclerc has grown and grown in his time with Ferrari, going from a product of its driver academy to its youngest F1 driver since 1961, when he first raced for the team six years ago. As ‘superteam’ line-ups go, there are few better in F1 history — meaning there’ll be no room for either driver to hide with their performance.
Charles Leclerc (R) is considered championship-worthy by many (Alessandro Bremec/Sipa USA)
Leclerc and Hamilton already enjoy a strong working relationship, which Hamilton thought was aided by their pre-existing friendship. Leclerc has welcomed the added focus on Hamilton during his early weeks with the team.
“It was exciting to see how happy and excited he was,” Leclerc said. “For me, that meant that the off-season was a bit more in the shadow, but I enjoyed it. I focused on myself.”
The momentum at Ferrari has moved in a positive direction in recent years, particularly since Vasseur took charge at the start of 2023. It fell just shy of the constructors’ championship last year, paying the price for a mid-season dip in performance. Leclerc has cited Vasseur’s calm, straightforward approach as a big change within Ferrari, while the potential to reunite with the Frenchman was also appealing to Hamilton, who won championships in junior categories racing for Vasseur’s ART Grand Prix team.
Hamilton firmly believes that Ferrari has all the ingredients it needs to win a world championship in the next two seasons. For Ferrari, the hope is that Hamilton can push it across the line and bring glory back to Maranello. Should Hamilton win his eighth world championship in the red of Ferrari — a third different team, after McLaren and Mercedes — it would strengthen the case that he is F1’s greatest ever. It would be a dream scenario for Hamilton, for Ferrari, and for the sport as a whole if the most successful and famous driver and team in its history succeeded together.
But F1 rarely deals in fairytales. Many of the previous greats who have driven for Ferrari came with the same hope and promise. World champions Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso and Alain Prost all went through honeymoon periods at Ferrari, enjoying early success and winning the adoration of the tifosi. Yet when the results did not materialise and the wait for a championship continued, frustration set in, bubbled over and led to their departures in sour fashions.
Lewis Hamilton, 40, doesn’t have many seasons left to win another title (Sipa USA)
Such a prospect for Hamilton at Ferrari seems unthinkable. We’re in the early stages, everything is exciting and new. Under Vasseur, the team also operates differently than the past, meaning there is likely to be more support and less political infighting. That won’t stop the pressure from building from the outside, be it from the Italian media or the pundits Hamilton recently called out in his cover interview for TIME Magazine, saying the criticism only fuels him further.
Time is what Hamilton and Ferrari may require. He noted how their relationship would continue to evolve through this year, but it may stretch even beyond that. The last driver to turn a move to Ferrari into a total success was Michael Schumacher, who joined in 1996 off the back of two world titles and became the centerpiece of the team’s efforts. It was not until Schumacher’s fifth season, in 2000, that he finally became a champion with Ferrari. Patience may be required, not least with the arrival of the new car design rules next year that will surely shape Hamilton’s hopes of a title with Ferrari.
At 40, there’s an added time pressure for Hamilton that there wasn’t for many of the previous drivers who joined Ferrari. It’s likely to be the final chapter of his F1 career, one that allows him to live out the dream he claims to have held since childhood of taking a blast in the red cars. Of writing himself into Ferrari folklore.
But don’t think for one second the romanticism around the move will soften Hamilton’s hunger. If anything, it’ll only embolden it. This isn’t about his legacy. It’s about winning.
“That’s my sole focus,” he said. “This is what I love.”
(Top photo: Sipa USA)
