We are now 10 races into the 2025 F1 season, and the dream marriage between Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari appears to be showing significant cracks.
The seven-time world champion lies just sixth in the Drivers’ Championship standings – a staggering 119 points behind the table-topping Oscar Piastri of McLaren. He is also 25 points behind Maranello team-mate Charles Leclerc.
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This is all a far cry from the title challenge the tifosi were expecting when Hamilton rocked up in Italy in January wearing that beautifully cut double-breasted black suit and spectacular overcoat. So far, sadly, it has been more ‘Primarni’ than Giorgio Armani on the track.
Hamilton’s post-race interviews in recent weeks have made for uncomfortable listening with the British superstar clearly struggling to get to grips with his new surroundings, and his tricky SF-25 car.
The latest example came after his sixth-place finish in the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal – once again behind Leclerc. His frustrations with ‘the Maranello way’ clearly boiling over.
Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari frustration
He told media: “I’m trying to challenge the guys. I’m constantly fighting with the engineers, asking them questions. They set things up in a certain way and say ‘we’ve always done it this way.’ And I say to them: ‘What if we tried this instead?'”
Statements like that have made big headlines in UK media, and they are also producing raised eyebrows back in Italy as well.
One man deeply surprised by Hamilton’s latest message was Ferrari insider Luigi Mazzola – a man who spent more than 20 years with the team, winning 14 world titles in the process.
The former race engineer gave his reaction on the Sky Race Anatomy show in Italy, admitting: “Hamilton’s interview is sensational, you have to read it well. It talks about organisation, about mentality.”
This is not what Mazzola expected Hamilton to be saying 10 races into his Ferrari career – after all didn’t he join a team moulded by team principal Fred Vasseur in the last two years into an outfit which was ready to win?
Mazzola continued: “He has found himself in a team that needs to be rebuilt, as his father also said some time ago. Then he talks about these developments not coming, when we are in the 10th race now.
“All this leaves me very perplexed, because from a team like Ferrari, you expect all the infrastructure to win, not that Hamilton arrives and says everything is missing.
“Within the company, there should already be this mentality, and if it’s not there, it’s a worrying thing, very worrying. Obviously, around him, there is something that doesn’t add up.”
Vasseur on the hotseat, and a media frenzy
Right now it is Vasseur who appears to be on the hotseat in Maranello, with some local outlets believing it is already a done deal that he will be replaced for the 2026 season. The Frenchman’s future is an almost daily topic of conversation now.
That media frenzy, claims Mazzola, will only be adding to the internal doubts which surround this glamorous project, an F1 dream which so far is turning into a nightmare.
“With all this, there is no calm and serenity. In terms of the drivers and of everything that revolves around the driver himself, such as the engineers, in my opinion everything comes from a lack of confidence.”
Hamilton, Vasseur and Ferrari will look to regroup this weekend when the F1 schedule takes them to the Red Bull Ring for the Austrian Grand Prix.
