Lewis Hamilton has rarely found himself in this position. Ahead of the 2025 season, he must once again prove himself.
Not since his days at McLaren has there been such uncertainty over Hamilton’s level. He won the world championship with the Woking outfit in 2008 but the following years were marked by inconsistency.
Perhaps his messiest season was 2011, when he finished three places and 43 points below teammate Jenson Button in the standings. He was involved in multiple incidents, most notably with Ferrari’s Felipe Massa.
Hamilton would join Mercedes for the 2013 season, and he bagged the title in just his second year. What followed was one of the most dominant runs in F1 history.
The British driver rattled off six championships in seven years, breaking every major record in the process. Mercedes finally slipped out of contention at the beginning of F1’s ground-effect era in 2022, but even then the consensus was that Hamilton was more or less maximising the car.
In 2023, he was arguably one of the most impressive performers on the grid, finishing as best of the rest behind the untouchable Red Bull. He outscored George Russell by nearly 60 points, but announced in the winter that he’d be leaving Mercedes to join Ferrari.
Lewis Hamilton told Mercedes he didn’t have ‘the confidence to push’
Hamilton’s 2024 campaign was arguably the worst of his 18 in F1. While only 22 points adrift of Russell, he lost the qualifying head-to-head by an alarming 19-5 margin.
His status as an all-time great is beyond dispute, but he must demonstrate at Ferrari this year that he’s still among the sport’s elite drivers. That will determine whether he can win an unprecedented eighth championship.
Speaking on the Formula For Success podcast, ex-F1 team boss Eddie Jordan relayed Hamilton’s complaints about last year’s Mercedes. He apparently felt there was a major problem with the W15’s rear end.
Because of that instability, he didn’t have the ‘confidence’ to push flat-out. Russell scored all four of Mercedes’ poles, though they finished level for victories on two apiece.
“He said to Toto [Wolff] and to Bono [Peter Bonnington, his race engineer] that there was something seriously wrong with the back of the car, that it wasn’t conveying confidence in each corner,” Jordan said.
“He just didn’t feel that the car was giving him the confidence to push to the level that he needed to get pole positions and race wins. Having said that, George Russell absolutely demolished him in qualifying, and to some extent in the races as well.”
Has Lewis Hamilton just lost his biggest advantage over Charles Leclerc?
One report claims Hamilton has now used all of his test days at Ferrari, six weeks before the 2025 season gets underway. Under the rules, any full-time driver not classed as a rookie is only permitted four days of TPC running.
Hamilton can still drive the 2025 car outside of race weekends through a filming day/shakedown exemption. He’ll also have access to historic cars (which are at least five years old).
But Ferrari had to consume their allocation after the 40-year-old hit the barriers in Barcelona at the end of last month. The considerable damage to the 2023 car prompted changes to the schedule.
The team have been back in action at the same venue this week, carrying out a 2026 Pirelli test. Leclerc has drawn praise for his tyre management – a worrying sign for the experienced Hamilton, who may have been counting on superior race-craft in the intra-team battle.
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