30s down on his team-mate and yet to secure a Grand Prix podium, Gian Carlo Minardi says Lewis Hamilton’s form in F1 2025 is “inexplicable”.

Signing with Ferrari after 12 seasons with Mercedes, many predicted this season would see a rejuvenated Hamilton behind the wheel of the SF-25.

Lewis Hamilton’s Saudi GP did ‘not line up with a seven-time World Champion’

So much so there was talk of Hamilton and his team-mate Charles Leclerc fighting for the World title.

“It will not be easy with two contenders of that calibre,” said former F1 team owner Minardi back in January. “The situation will be different in the case of a dominant Ferrari. At that point, the track will do the talking.”

The only talking the track has done, though, is in McLaren’s favour.

F1 2025: The season’s winners and losers

👉 The results of the F1 2025 championship

👉 The updated Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship standings

F1 2025 has been all about McLaren, and whether they can launch a two-driver title fight or if their mistakes will trip them up.

To date the Woking team has four of five Grand Prix wins, new championship leader Oscar Piastri having claimed three of those, while Max Verstappen is the only non-McLaren Grand Prix winner.

Hamilton did, however, offer 24 hours of hope as he claimed pole position for the Sprint in China and followed that up with a win. But, come Grand Prix qualifying, he was once again behind Leclerc and they were once again McLaren and Red Bull.

Overall it is Leclerc who has had the better results, the Monegasque driver leading all the Ferrari head-to-head battles including being 47 to 20 points ahead of Hamilton in the Drivers’ standings.

The gap between the team-mates notably grew in Saudi Arabia where Leclerc claimed the team’s first Grand Prix podium with a P3 result while Hamilton was 30 seconds down in seventh place.

Minardi is perplexed by the seven-time World Champion’s deficit.

“Leclerc’s grand prix is to be applauded,” the Italian told the Minardi website of the Jeddah race.

“Not only did he give Ferrari its first podium of the season in a GP, but he hid and lessened the car’s real problems which were instead very evident with Hamilton who had a pace that did not line up with a seven-time World Champion.

“At the present time, it is rather inexplicable.”

Hamilton too finds it inexplicable, telling the media including PlanetF1.com after the Saudi race that he does not know what exactly he needs to improve to get the most out of the Ferrari.

“There’s nothing to say, ‘Hey, this is the issue,’” the seven-time World Champion admitted.

“At the moment there’s no fix. This is how it’s going to be for the rest of the year. It’s just going to be painful.”

As such he’s cancelled all his plans for the week between Jeddah and Miami to return to Ferrari’s Maranello headquarters to hopefully find a breakthrough, or at the very least, understand what’s going wrong.

He told DAZN Spain after the race: “It was disastrous in terms of pace. I had no pace at all, as you could see.

“I had issues with the car. I was expecting a better day.

“I don’t have a week off [after this race], I’ve got a work week. After today, I’ll have to cancel some plans.”

Read next: Ferrari make clear Lewis Hamilton statement after ‘bosses not happy’ bombshell