Lewis Hamilton has done little this season to prove that he was an upgrade on Carlos Sainz. In fact, he’s struggled far more than the Spaniard relative to Charles Leclerc.
Last season, Sainz beat Leclerc in nine of the 23 qualifying sessions featuring both drivers. A 13-8 defeat in the race-day head-to-head was also respectable.
But even after outpacing the Monegasque in Barcelona, Hamilton is 7-2 down in qualifying. Leclerc’s advantage is even bigger on Sundays (7-1).
There were already warning signs last year as Hamilton slipped out of the top six in the standings for the first time. In a career-first, he was clearly slower than his teammate (then George Russell) across the season.
The hope was that a move to Ferrari would revitalise him, but he can’t find comfort in a tricky SF-25, and it’s increasingly hard to dispute the narrative of decline.
Carlos Sainz says Lewis Hamilton facing the same adaptation issues as Daniel Ricciardo
In an interview with Mundo Deportivo, Sainz was asked whether he takes any ‘pride’ from Hamilton’s struggles. Some would take it as a sign that Ferrari made the wrong decision.
Sainz appeared to smile after outqualifying both Ferraris at Imola, but generally he’s shown little sign of bitterness. And he has great sympathy for Hamilton after changing teams five times during his career and facing difficult adaptation processes.
Sainz himself started slowly at Williams this year, scoring just one point in the first four rounds. He’s now found form with 11 in the last five.
He drew a parallel with Daniel Ricciardo, who couldn’t gel with the McLaren car when he joined in 2021. That culminated in the team axing him a year before the end of his contract.
| CATEGORY | RIC | NOR |
| Points | 115 | 160 |
| Wins | 1 | 0 |
| Podiums | 1 | 4 |
| Championship position | 8th | 6th |
| Qualifying H2H | 8 | 14 |
| Race H2H | 7 | 15 |
“I understand them, because I know how complicated it is,” Sainz said. “Pride? No.
“You understand why it’s so hard, because I’ve had to suffer through changing teams five times, and it’s something that was practically unspoken about before, the adaptation process. Before, everyone expected you to be there by the third race.
“I remember with Ricciardo, when he switched to Renault, and also to McLaren, there was an adaptation process. And so do I, in every team I’ve changed.
“And before, it was as if people didn’t buy into it [the argument] or saw it as a bit of an excuse, and now that a seven-time champion is switching and also struggles, it somewhat confirms what I was telling you five or 10 years ago: that maybe you didn’t buy into it, but now you do.”
Valtteri Bottas on ‘more chilled’ Mercedes after Lewis Hamilton exit
Ricciardo joined McLaren with a reputation as one of F1’s best drivers. He’d won seven Grands Prix at Red Bull and finished fifth in the standings for midfield team Renault in 2020.
But he started to unravel once he joined the Woking outfit and rarely showed his best form again before his mid-season RB exit in 2024. Ricciardo now considers himself retired from F1.
While Hamilton sounded disconsolate after the Spanish GP, where he described the car balance as worse than ever, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur remains optimistic. After all, he needs this move to work.
It was already the highest-pressure role in F1 before the sport’s biggest star arrived. Just as the atmosphere at Mercedes is ‘more chilled’ without Hamilton, in the words of Valtteri Bottas, his presence has considerably raised the stakes at Ferrari.
