After the opening races of the 2025 season with his new team Scuderia Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton outlines the difficulties of joining a new team ahead of the F1 Japanese GP, and he provided insight on how many things need to be worked on.
Though the pace of the Ferraris looks promising in the early days of both race weeekends, they failed to secure big Grand Prix points at both Melbourne and Shanghai.
Before the Japanese Grand Prix weekend starts, the seven-time World Champion reflected on the previous two weekends in his print media session, the car’s set-up, their highs and lows as a team, and their hard work to overcome problems and improve the car for the rest of the season.
Ups and downs are a combination of several elements
Before the season started in Melbourne, Ferrari and its assertive duo, Leclerc and Hamilton, were hopeful to fight for Grand Prix wins with the SF-25. However, this has not been the case for the Italian team. They were struggling with ups and downs in both events in the season.
Though their performance looked strong in practice, the pair struggled for pace in the Q3 shoot-out at the Australian Grand Prix.
The next weekend in Shanghai, Hamilton won the Sprint race from pole position, but in the Sunday race, they could not repeat that run at the front and finished fifth-sixth on the road. After the race, Leclerc and Hamilton were disqualified due to technical infractions.
The Italian team’s mixed performance induced a disappointing season start for its community. Lewis Hamilton stated that even though their variance in pace is a combination of several things, it is mostly due to the SF-25’s set-up.
He also remarked that he is still in the process of learning the car and the items through trial and error. The 105-time race winner admitted that he may have made the wrong decision in the Saturday qualifying in China by changing the set-up instead of backing himself in his new team.
“It’s a combination of probably several different things, but I think mostly just the last race [it was] the set-up. Just feeling in the set-up.
“I told you that I’m still learning about this car, so I still haven’t tested every item that they have yet.
“Ultimately, I made the wrong decision on set-up for the Saturday going into qualifying at the last race, which then I just had to live with for the race.”
Understanding SF-25 more and more in each race is great progress
When asked about Carlos Sainz’s comments and his explanation of how long he expects until he’s fully in tune with the FW47, Hamilton reflected on how people tend to underestimate easily what is going on behind the scenes when a driver moves across from one team to another.
The British driver emphasised that they go through all these different elements when they start a fresh in a new squad, as Hamilton and Sainz have explained in-depth throughout the campaign so far.
While unsure of how long it will take to familiarise himself with the SF-25, the seven-time World Champion is confident he is not driving it like he was with the W15 in 2024.
“I really don’t know [how long it will take].
“I don’t feel like I’m driving, I don’t feel like I’m driving this like my last car.
“For me, it’s just understanding, as I said, the technical side. It’s the understanding of all the tools that I have.
“It likes to be driven differently.
“But, I’m sorry, I think there is, as I mentioned last time, there is a general lack of understanding of what we do back there. I think that outside of that garage most people completely underestimate what we actually do.
“When we’re talking about set-up and changes that we’re making, all the different graphs that you’re looking at for aero, through-corner balance, mechanical balance, roll balance, all these different things that we’re trying to play with and finesse through a weekend.
The valuable learnings taken from China as he got to do long stints
He explained that the car’s pace wasn’t the main problem they dealt with in the last two races. The World Champion highlighted that he is still experiencing many firsts with SF-25, such as driving in the rain.
The Briton also mentioned that the China Sprint Race was the first time doing a long run with the tyres, considering his car had reliability issues on the final day of F1 Testing in Bahrain after starting a long run. Hamilton superbly won that 19-lap contest in his Ferrari.
He expressed that the lack of testing experience is there, but he keeps on exploring SF-25 in detail through each race. Although Lewis Hamilton is aware that there is a lot to work on, he is happy with the way he is progressing in Ferrari.
“After analysing the last two races, the first race I generally didn’t feel great in the car at the beginning, but our pace wasn’t too bad on the first two days; Sunday was the first time I’d ever driven the car in the rain, and I was learning a lot throughout the race.
“Then in the last race, that was the first time I’d actually done a long run. Every other driver here pretty much got to do the Abu Dhabi test and try the 2025 tyre. I didn’t. We went into the race run in Bahrain [testing] and the car broke down.
“The Sprint race was the first time I’d actually done a 20-lap stint and then in the race it was the first time I’d ever tried the C2, so I was just learning that through a race. You don’t just put the tyre on and know what it’s going to do.
“I was definitely starting to feel the onwards effect of not being able to do the test at the end of the year, and so on reflection I’m quite happy of how I’ve adapted in just those two races. But I’ve definitely got a lot of work to do to make sure that it’s better moving forward.”
The Chinese race could have been very different if Hamilton and Ferrari stuck with the same set-up
The Saturday Sprint Race in Shanghai was where Hamilton outperformed his Ferrari car, according to his teammate. However, his performance did not continue in the Saturday qualifying and Sunday race.
Though Hamilton got the set-up right for the Sprint, he stated that it was the wrong decision for the rest of the weekend to make changes, and it was very difficult to drive the car.
When asked the question whether he could repeat his Sprint performance and triumph if he got the set-up right, Hamilton claimed that he would. He further added that perhaps if they had left the car alone, the destiny of the race would have been very different.
Lewis Hamilton said that he is taking guidance from the people in Ferrari who worked with different World Champions rather than pointing them in a direction as he did at Mercedes.
The Scuderia have worked with Michael Schumacher, Kimi Räikkönen, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso this century before the Brit came along in 2025.
Hamilton added in a fun tone that the improvement in performance in Leclerc’s car after getting damage to his car was surprising to see. He claimed that it could be counted as an improvement.
“I think I could have. If we had just left the car probably alone or actually [if] the step that we did take [had been] an improvement, I think we could have qualified in the top three, which would then have had a much different result, most likely.
“But that wasn’t the case, and it was really difficult to drive from the moment we went out in qualifying. Then, it was the same balance on a Sunday, so we just had to persevere with it.
“In this period of time, I’m not directing my engineers. I mean, more so probably when I was at Mercedes, obviously I knew the car, I knew all the tools. So it was kind of like, this is where I want to go, this is what I want to do.
“You have to take a lot of the guidance from those who have spent time with all the different World Champions before me.
“As a team, we didn’t make the right choice for qualifying on either car. What was interesting was the improved balance that Charles had with the damage to his car. It was fascinating to see. It was a big improvement.”
