Car-crash season with Ferrari weighing on Lewis Hamilton ahead of Monza homecoming
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Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton greets fans during an event at the Royal Palace in Milan.
PHOTO: EPA
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MILAN – Lewis Hamilton is in the midst of a crisis of confidence that the Formula One icon has never known in his storied career, as Ferrari fans hope for a sharp turnaround at the Italian Grand Prix.
Seven-time champion Hamilton’s arrival at Maranello had made Ferrari’s vociferous support dream of an end to an 18-year wait for a world title by a driver in red.
Instead, the 40-year-old is trailing championship leader Oscar Piastri by a whopping 200 points in sixth spot after a disastrous campaign with Ferrari as he failed to record a single podium finish. Teammate Charles Leclerc is just 42 points better off in fifth.
Last weekend’s Dutch race was the low point of 2025 for the Scuderia, with both Hamilton and Leclerc crashing out of a race which had been preceded by the Briton twice spinning his car in practice.
Nonetheless, Hamilton still appears to be happy to be with the sport’s most famous team, telling Sky in Italy on Sept 3 that it was “really special to remember that I’m a Ferrari driver” every time he comes to the country.
Hamilton and Leclerc, who delighted fans by winning at Monza in 2024, were greeted enthusiastically by hordes of supporters at an event held in the shadow of Milan’s famous Gothic cathedral.
“I saw with Charles what the atmosphere is like when you win at Monza with Ferrari, I was right by his side. It’s the race you’re waiting for,” said Hamilton, who has won at the “Temple of Speed” five times in his career, four times with Mercedes and once with McLaren.
“Winning here with another team is a fantastic experience because you can still see the sea of red and the fans. But it must be really special receiving all that affection from the fans like Charles and other drivers who’ve won here with Ferrari did.”
Hamilton has taken badly his failure to perform after switching to Ferrari following 12 years at Mercedes, referring to himself as “completely useless” at the Hungarian GP in an outburst which led to talk of the veteran quitting the sport come the end of the year.
And his chances of making the Monza masses happy were further hit after the Dutch GP when he was handed a five-place grid penalty for this weekend, after failing to slow down in a yellow flag zone on his way to the grid.
Hamilton and Leclerc are in truth little more than a photogenic sideshow as McLaren duo Piastri and Lando Norris battle for a drivers’ crown which would be the first for the British team since Hamilton won his first title in 2008.
Piastri has 309 points from 15 races and leads his teammate by 34, with Norris failing to finish the race in Zandvoort after suffering a mechanical failure in the closing laps.
Between them, Piastri and Norris have won all but three races this season at the wheel of the McLaren cars which have blown away the competition.
They will be chasing their sixth win in a row and 13th in 16 races and are a whopping 324 points clear of Ferrari in the constructors’ standings.
Not even reigning champion Max Verstappen has had enough to challenge McLaren and a 104-point gap separating him from Piastri suggests that his run of F1 titles is set to end at four in a row.
The Dutchman managed to finish second in front of his home fans last weekend, pouncing on Norris’ misfortune, but he is realistic about his chances of putting pressure on Piastri over the nine remaining races of the season.
The famously blunt 27-year-old has already said that his goal for the rest of the campaign is to “just try to make the best of it”, starting at a circuit where he has won twice. AFP, REUTERS
