Lewis Hamilton has joined Ferrari in what is, without a doubt, the biggest story of the F1 2025 championship barring a potential 2021 Abu Dhabi-esque season finale.

37 months after losing the Drivers’ Championship title to Max Verstappen in controversial circumstances at the Yas Marina circuit, Hamilton has swapped silver for red in a bid to secure that elusive eighth title.

Lewis Hamilton is under pressure to win a title with Ferrari

Although the Briton celebrated the majority of his Formula 1 success with Mercedes, 85 wins and six World titles, he came up short in 2021 – one lap short – when he lost the World title while seeking to make history.

Mercedes weren’t able to retaliate as the Brackley squad was undone by the ground-effect aerodynamic cars. So much so that F1’s winningest driver didn’t win a single Grand Prix for two seasons until Hamilton finally broke his duck at the 2024 British Grand Prix.

By then, he’d already signed with Ferrari.

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Hamilton announced even before the first race of the 2024 that he’d be swapping silver for red in the F1 2025 championship having signed a multi-year contract with the Scuderia.

But while some questioned his decision, Ferrari’s five race wins and their near-miss in the Constructors’ Championship, losing to McLaren by just 14 points, put paid to that.

However, it is not the Constructors’ title that Ferrari’s Tifosi are dreaming of – they want a Drivers’ Championship crown.

Ferrari last won the World title in 2007 when Kimi Raikkonen beat Hamilton and his team-mate Fernando Alonso to P1 by a single point. Since then there have been a spate of runner-up results but Ferrari have time and again fallen short of the ultimate prize.

The pressure is now on Hamilton to deliver.

As several pundits have pointed out, it’s one thing to win a World title, it’s another to win one with Ferrari.

“Lewis knows there is pressure,” former Haas team boss Guenther Steiner told GPBlog. “You cannot avoid it, he’s a seven-time World Champion and a very good racer.

“Going to Ferrari, it’s a big story.

“I think Lewis can deal with the pressure and Ferrari needs it because they were very good last year, and now if they start strong in Australia they have a good chance to bring a world championship back to Italy.”

Ferrari head into the new season, which begins in March with the Australian Grand Prix, amidst reports they’ve potentially made a bigger step forward than their rivals – as claimed by Martin Brundle.

However, Steiner concedes when it comes to Ferrari, one never knows what’s Tifosi prayers and what’s realism.

“With Ferrari, you never know how good the car is,” he said. “It’s always the biggest [question].

“But I think last year they went into and especially towards the end of the season to have good development, to make right moves.”

“They were very solid, very well organised, and Lewis getting there… Obviously, everybody is on their toes. And obviously Fred [Vasseur] wants a world championship, so Lewis wants a world championship, the eighth. So I think they will be good as well,” he continued.

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