The Big Question: Is Lewis Hamilton’s time at the top of Formula One over? 

When the news broke in February 2024 that

Lewis Hamilton was to join Charles Leclerc at Ferrari

from 2025, it was the story of the century. He was Formula One’s G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) and Mercedes had been his home since 2013, and had helped him to six of his seven world championships. The very idea of leaving was preposterous.

But Ferrari were in the doldrums, having last won a drivers’ championship in 2007 and the constructors title in 2008. And company executive chairman John Elkann had lured him with a lucrative three-year deal – Forbes in December said Hamilton earned US$70.5 million (S$91.4 million) in 2025, the second-highest in the paddock after Max Verstappen (US$76 million).

“It’s been a crazy few days,” Hamilton admitted then. “I still remember the feeling of taking a leap of faith when I joined Mercedes in 2013. Some people didn’t understand it but I was right, and it’s the feeling I have again now. It’s a dream for anyone, a goal to be achieved.”

Hamilton broke the news over a coffee at Mercedes boss Toto Wolff’s house in Oxford. “Everyone dreams of being in a red car,” the phlegmatic Austrian admitted.

But none of the parties could have foreseen what a nightmare that dream would turn into.

DQ disaster in China

Hamilton’s arrival was greeted with delirium by the tifosi, who had already taken him to their hearts. His first race, in Australia, did not yield the victory that either Nigel Mansell or Fernando Alonso had enjoyed (in 1989 and 2010 respectively) as newbies, but he was close to teammate Leclerc as he began to learn about life chez Ferrari.

It was immediately apparent, however, that there was a long way to go in his relationship with race engineer Riccardo Adami. The latter had big shoes to fill after Hamilton’s intuitive, fraternal friendship with Peter Bonnington at Mercedes. The Italian was too insistent, offering patronising advice on driving. The shortcomings in the relationship would be a recurring factor.

“Validazione” (Italian for validation) was swift. Starting from pole position in China’s sprint race, he thrashed Oscar Piastri and old foe Verstappen to win second time out in a drive that was vintage Hamilton. But the Ferrari SF-25 had handling deficiencies, and, after running with too low a ride height in the search for more grip, both cars were disqualified from the Chinese GP the following day.

That would set the tone for the rest of 2025.

Battling to settle in

Ferrari are not like any other F1 team. Their hierarchy has always been domineering, even though the ultimate bosses have often lacked real understanding of racing. Luca di Montezemolo was an exception, whose revamp in the 1970s helped Ferrari and Niki Lauda to win titles. But even he had to be contained in the Schumacher era, when Michael, team boss Jean Todt and engineers Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne formed a “four-legged stool” that di Montezemolo could not destabilise.

According to some insiders, there remains a divide between departments that teams such as Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull would never tolerate. “This,” said one who did not wish to be identified, “has its roots in the old disdain of the mechanics for the engineers, and vice versa.” These days the sporting director is Diego Ioverno, a likeable former Ferrari mechanic with nearly 25 years of experience, but some of the old divides and blame culture persist. And some things are still done the way they have been for decades.

Hamilton likes to brake and turn in at the same time, and much of his speed is derived thus. And so much of what he does is based on muscle memory, and trust. Now he is in a nervous car which uses all-Brembo brakes, whereas his previous experience came in cars fitted with Brembo calipers operating on Carbon Industries’ carbon discs and pads. This might seem trivial, but the feel is a key part to ultimate trust under braking, and the power delivery of the Ferrari V6 turbo-hybrid is much less linear than that of the Mercedes engines he had become used to since 2014, and the violent engine braking affects that, too.

That explains why he often spoke of something that he just had to get used to, since nothing significant could be done to resolve such problems until the new formula starts in 2026.

“What is clear when you listen to the radio comms is that there are several points in every weekend where the relationship between the pitwall and car hasn’t yet settled,” former F1 racer turned analyst and commentator Karun Chandhok added. “This is symptomatic of the wider chasm between driver and team.”

“I thought it was a bold move to go there, an exciting idea,” former world champion Damon Hill said. “But it’s proved to be probably more difficult than he thought. It’s very difficult to switch teams these days, to learn different methods and different cars’ characteristics. And these just are really tricky cars to drive. They’re stiff and they’re bouncing and they’re pretty unforgiving, and getting the tyres in the ‘window’ sometimes seems almost impossible to perfect.

“When Michael went there, he took Ross Brawn, and had his own little protective platoon. Ferrari is monolithic, almost like a cult. It seems to me it runs on fear. Fear of exposure, fear of failure, fear of consequences of stepping out of line; it’s got all those issues that no other team has got.”

Hamilton’s self-flagellation

Hungary was the nadir for Hamilton. After failing to get through Q2, he declared: “I’m absolutely useless. The team, they have no problem – you’ve seen the car is on pole. They probably need to change driver.”

“Honestly, I would have liked to see him more constructively critical,” former F1 racer and five-time Le Mans winner Emanuele Pirro said, referring to car performance. “I don’t like to see him so self-blaming. It’s horrible. It’s very honest, but maybe too honest.”

Team principal Fred Vasseur shrugged off Hamilton’s remarks, saying: “Honestly, I don’t need to motivate him; he’s frustrated but not demotivated. Perhaps we all underestimated how long it would take to settle in together. Of course he’s demanding, but that’s mostly with himself first, and the car and team, and a key part of what made him such an outstanding champion, and why we signed him.”

Ahead of the summer break, Hamilton added: “I’ll be using the time to reset, recharge and come back stronger. The fight’s not over – don’t count me out.”

Public criticism from the boss

Perhaps overexcited by the success of the Le Mans-winning Ferrari 499P in clinching the World Endurance Championship in Bahrain on Nov 8, Elkann made a speech in Milan. While praising everything about Ferrari in general, he advised his F1 drivers to “stop talking and drive”.

Since they were continuously seeking ways to help the team to make an uncompetitive car faster, this was widely regarded in the F1 paddock as crass, and redolent of somebody who had zero understanding of what was going on in his own team.

“It’s not showing good leadership to say ‘the mechanics are good, the engineers are good, but you guys are bad’ in public. If you have nothing good to say, say nothing in that position,” former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner counselled.

Was Ferrari the right move?

“By any measure, it’s been a disappointing first season for LH at Ferrari,” former F1 racer and Sky F1 colour commentator Martin Brundle observed of Hamilton’s decision to switch teams.

“The China sprint was an outlier but well delivered, and we have seen flashes of LH brilliance. But, as with last year and George Russell, he’s been outperformed by another young teammate in Charles Leclerc. With simulators and so much experience, I didn’t understand when Lewis said it’s hard to change teams, to understand the car systems, especially when Ollie Bearman jumped in the car at short notice in Saudi in 2024 and made it work straight away.

“But clearly LH had such a support structure around him at Merc, not least Bono, and they knew how to get the most from him and translate what he needed from the car. LH has been painful to observe quite frequently in his interviews, and that’s sad. Unquestionably the Mercedes has been a better package and so it was a mistake to move in that respect.

“No doubt he’s earned a great deal of money and fully enjoyed and immersed himself in the privilege of being a Ferrari driver, but he’d have traded much of that to be winning, I suspect.”

Hill added: “He’s still capable of delivering once you give him what he needs. And I just don’t get the sense that he’s got a dedicated following within the team around him.”

So is it time to quit?

Reflecting on what Hamilton dubbed “the worst season ever” and a “nightmare”, is age just catching up on the 40-year-old.

“For me, there are a number of factors,” Pirro said. “One, and I went through it, when you grow older your level of flexibility and adaptability shrinks. Different peaks arrive at different times of your career; your peak of experience, peak of sharpness, peak of speed, peak of racing intelligence, but let’s say when the overall peak is passed, it doesn’t mean that you will not win races any more.

“But it’s more important that you are in your comfort zone. And if you can find that, you can be as strong as you were before. I think Lewis can still do it.”

Chandhok added: “Now the question is: ‘Did they hire Lewis to be an equal to Charles?’ If so, they could have kept (Carlos) Sainz, and therefore in that context, the year has not delivered for either side.

“If the question is: ‘In Charles, they know that they arguably have the fastest qualifier in F1 today. So did they hire Lewis not for his speed, but for his knowledge and experience in putting a championship campaign together? The answer will only come further down the line.”

Former Mercedes boss Brawn knows Lewis well, and opined: “Lewis is a pretty determined character and has shown resilience in the past, so there’s no reason why he won’t succeed. I just hope that Ferrari get it right with the new rules.”

Hamilton’s old boss Wolff agrees, saying: “If he aligns all of his performance contributors, feels that the car is the way he likes it, he will be stellar. I have no doubt about that.”

Hamilton himself has zero intention of quitting.

“I don’t regret the decision. I know it takes time to build and grow within an organisation. We have a lot of work to do, for sure. There are lots of improvements we need to make collectively, but I think no-one’s under any illusion in the team that we all have to play our part. And I believe that we can.”