The first day of running at Ferrari’s private Fiorano circuit has ended and Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton can reflect on their first outing of 2025.
All eyes are on how Ferrari keep two drivers who have championship ambitions happy this season.
Charles Leclerc is the incumbent at Ferrari as he enters his seventh season with the team.
He’s finished runner-up in the Drivers’ Championship before but finished the 2024 season as the in-form driver on the grid and will fancy his chances of winning his first title this year if Ferrari’s car is competitive enough.
However, Leclerc comes up against his toughest teammate yet in Lewis Hamilton and already their first run at the team’s Fiorano circuit was only a shakedown, they’ll be closely studying each other’s data and lap times.
Conditions were far from perfect in Italy on Wednesday morning with both drivers forced to use the wet Pirelli tyres.
A report from Autoracer has shared the best time that Leclerc managed during this session as he was unable to switch onto the dry Pirelli Academy tyres.
That’s unlike Hamilton who got 30 laps under his belt and took advantage of the track improving as the morning session went on.
Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc’s first lap times as Ferrari drivers compared
At 9:17 am on Wednesday, Hamilton set out on his first tentative lap of the Fiorano circuit as he got to grips with Ferrari’s 2023 F1 car.
Hamilton’s best lap was around the one-minute mark, but he wasn’t able to push as hard as he would have liked even when he put dry tyres on during the 30 total laps he completed.
Once his session had finished, Hamilton greeted the Ferrari fans who gathered to watch him before Leclerc got into the car to get his first laps of the year under his belt.
The Monegasque driver ran exclusively in the wet and wasn’t able to complete as much running as he would have liked due to the conditions, managing less than half of Hamilton’s total by running for just 14 laps.
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Despite that, Leclerc managed to complete some practice starts similar to Hamilton before recording a best time of around the 1:06 mark.
It’s unsurprisingly that Leclerc was six seconds slower than Hamilton given the different conditions that they were running in.
It’s also unknown whether they were running the same engine modes and if Ferrari had instructed the two drivers to complete different programs while on track.
Despite not being able to push to the same level as Hamilton, Leclerc did complete some doughnuts on track to entertain the fans who had stuck around to watch his session.
The 27-year-old will be keen to show Hamilton how fast he really is once Ferrari organise a test long enough for both drivers to set several flying laps.
How Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton’s qualifying records compare
While Hamilton may have set the faster time on Wednesday, the context means that virtually nothing can be read into the results of their first runs.
However, when it comes to one-lap pace, Ferrari will hope they have a pairing that can potentially dominate the rest of the field.
Although Hamilton had his issues in qualifying last season, he still holds the record for most pole positions in Formula 1 history.
READ MORE: Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton’s life outside F1 from net worth to family
Meanwhile, Martin Brundle thinks Leclerc is F1’s best qualifier and has 26 pole positions to his name to prove it.
Leclerc’s problem has been converting his pole positions into wins, with just eight Grand Prix wins to his name in 147 starts.
However, many of his poles came during Max Verstappen’s reign of dominance where his Red Bull was set up to dominate races, while the Monegasque’s ability to extract pace for a single lap is arguably unmatched.
Even testing in Bahrain next month might not provide fans with representative times, but when it comes to Q1 starting in Australia in March, both drivers will give it everything to prove their Ferrari’s number one in 2025.
