Lewis Hamilton has been warned that the grace period before Ferrari’s Tifosi and others demand success won’t be two years, it will only “six months”.

After that, if he’s not delivering, the “attacks” will start to come according to former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner.

Will Lewis Hamilton be given a grace period for the ‘attacks’ start?

Hamilton is gearing up for his first season as a Ferrari driver, having joined the Maranello tea from Mercedes on a multi-year contract ahead of the F1 2025 championship.

Despite his many years of thwarting Ferrari’s drivers in the race to become F1 World Champion, Hamilton received a warm reception as he donned the red race suit with over a 1,000 Tifosi gathered at the Fiorano circuit in heavy mist to watch him put in his first laps in a Ferrari F1 car.

His arrival has dominated headlines and promises to be one of the big topics throughout the F1 2025 championship as Hamilton and Ferrari seek to make history as he fights for an eighth World title.

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Although the Briton reportedly has three years to achieve the goal, that said to be the duration of his multi-year contract, this year could be his best opportunity given Ferrari’s gains ahead of the final season of the current regulations.

The Tifosi will be hoping that Hamilton makes a swift start, perhaps even making his mark as the eighth Ferrari driver to win on debut when the season begins in Australia next month, but Steiner believes they will give a grace period.

It will, however, be a short one he warns.

“He will have got what you call it, a period of time,” the Italian told GPBlog. “There’s a word for it where nobody will attack him. It’s not going to be two years, it’s going to be six months.

“Then the pressure will start to come and the criticism. Everything he does will be second-guessed and questioned. But you’ve got a period of time where you can make it work, and you just need to focus on that to make it work.

“If it doesn’t work, deal with it when you get there. Care, but don’t deal with something before it happened.”

The good news though, is he believes Hamilton made the decision to join Ferrari because he believes it will work in his favour.

“You never have to think about that because you never going to do something thinking it doesn’t work,” he said. “If it doesn’t work, you deal with it when you get there. If you go in that it couldn’t work, you shouldn’t be doing it.

“I say that because Lewis is well aware, ‘I’m gonna make this work’. Not to waste time thinking it couldn’t work because that takes energy. So put the best in he can.

“Obviously, he thought long about this decision, and he said this is what I want to do, and now he has to follow through with it. That could be the thing that Ferrari is a World Champion again.”

Hamilton last won a World title in 2020, his fourth on the trot and seventh overall, before losing the ground to Max Verstappen in a thrilling wheel-to-wheel battle on the final lap of the season a year later.

Although he wasn’t involved in the title fight during his final three season with Mercedes, last year he did break his 945-day winless streak with a victory the British Grand Prix before adding a second P1 for the season in Spa.

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