Lewis Hamilton goes into the 2025 Formula 1 season facing arguably the biggest challenge of his racing career.
After 12 seasons with Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton decided to begin the final chapter of his time racing in F1 with Ferrari.
Hamilton’s final years with Mercedes didn’t go to plan after the heartbreaking end to the 2021 campaign when he missed out on winning his eighth drivers’ championship to Max Verstappen.
He went on to win just two races during his last three years with the Silver Arrows, struggling to get to grips with this generation of cars.
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur didn’t hesitate when offered the chance to hire Hamilton and Carlos Sainz was the unlucky driver to miss out.
Vasseur has praised Hamilton’s immediate impact at Ferrari but ultimately his performances on track will determine whether or not the move has been a success.
Hamilton is on the longest run of consecutive seasons in the sport and will reach 400 Grand Prix starts before his current Ferrari deal expires.
However, journalist Jennie Gow – speaking on the Business of Winning Podcast – has revealed that even after all these years, the seven-time world champion doesn’t love everything about Formula 1.
Host and journalist Matt Gallagher shared that several other former world champions shared a similar feeling with Hamilton.
Ferrari star Lewis Hamilton ‘doesn’t particularly like’ Formula 1 media duties
Reflecting on Hamilton’s reputation within the paddock, Gow said: “I think you do meet a lot of people who underestimate him, who don’t like him, who just think he’s rude, who think he’s arrogant, selfish.
“And these aren’t words that I connect with him. And there are days when he is incredibly short.
“He does not want to speak to the media. He doesn’t particularly like media days.
“But then you speak to every driver, they don’t like media days. What they like is getting in a car and driving really fast and not being asked the same question time and time again for the whole of Thursdays.
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“But actually, when you connect and spend time in a one-to-one situation, you get more, you get to actually see what they are like rather than the persona that they put on sometimes.”
Gallagher added: “By the way, listeners, that shortness that Jennie talked about is something that Nigel Mansell didn’t enjoy doing media days.
“Nelson Piquet hated them. Ayrton Senna didn’t enjoy doing media. They all just want to concentrate on the thing they want to do, which is drive the car fast, talk to the engineers, find a way to make the car go even faster, beat their teammate, [and] all that kind of good stuff.”
Lewis Hamilton’s record-breaking start to life as a Ferrari Formula 1 driver
It’s not a surprise that Hamilton isn’t a massive fan of the media duties associated with being an F1 driver, especially considering how long he’s been doing press conferences, post-session interviews and other obligations around racing.
However, the 40-year-old has also become the master of controlling the narrative around his career as his many interests outside of racing demonstrate.
Hamilton was spotted deliberately avoiding photographers during pre-season testing and covering his face, knowing full well he would be the biggest talking point in Bahrain.
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The British driver showed when he first turned up at Ferrari that he wanted everyone to know how excited he was about the project.
Hamilton’s first social media post as a Ferrari driver broke records and if he wins the Australian Grand Prix, he could easily surpass those numbers again.
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