Lewis Hamilton has said his pre-season for F1 2025 has left him feeling the “most positive” he’s felt going into a championship in years.

The seven-time F1 World Champion concludes Ferrari’s pre-season testing programme behind the wheel of the SF-25 on Friday, before heading to Australia for his first race with the Scuderia.

Lewis Hamilton: Most positive feeling in a long time

Hamilton’s pre-season comes to a close following a series of tests for Ferrari, which kicked off with a run in a two-year-old car under TPC (Testing of Previous Cars) rules, as well as a Pirelli tyre test.

This week marked his first outing in the car he’ll compete with in 2025, and Hamilton showed early potential by setting the fastest time of the morning session on Thursday and ended the day half a tenth clear of Charles Leclerc as the duo finished second and third overall.

With Leclerc taking the wheel for Friday morning, Hamilton’s afternoon outing is his last bit of acclimatisation before the first round of the championship takes place in Australia.

Asked for his thoughts on the feeling of the car, and his impression of where he might be once the season starts, Hamilton said it’s too early to offer a firm conclusion on Ferrari’s standing.

“I think that probably, in the last four years or so, I’ve learned that you really can’t judge too much from the first outlook,” he said.

“I definitely think in the past years before that, particularly in the previous generation of cars, it was much easier to know where you stood quite early on with that early feeling.

“I would say this is the most positive feeling that I’ve had in a long time. That’s all I can really say for now.”

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With the test coming to a close almost as quickly as it started, Hamilton – who has never been a huge fan of testing – laughed when asked if he would have appreciated more testing time for this particular circumstance.

“No,” he said, “I still am not a fan of testing, but I’ve really enjoyed the testing that I’ve had this year.

“I’m super grateful for the TPC testing that I got to do, and, fortunately… if I only had had this day and a half, I definitely wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now in terms of how comfortable I feel with the car.

“There’s still some ways to go, but, at this point, I’m just excited to get racing.

“I still feel that there’s plenty to come. But, fortunately, I’ve got to drive the 2023 car, so I’ve really been able to compare the 2024 and ’23 car and see where they’ve progressed, the progress they had on those two cars and how they’ve improved into this one.

“Obviously, I didn’t get to do the test at the end of [2024]. So, for me, I started relatively late compared to others that have come before me like Sebastian [Vettel] – he was here, started in late November [2014], so he had a good two months.

“Whereas for me, it’s been this month period that I’ve had, so a lot has been crammed in that time.

“But, personally, I like to just jump in the deep end and figure it out and that’s what we’re doing. But of course, we’re going through the processes and trying to really… I feel like, in this period of time, we’ve built a really good foundation.

“Everyone looks really quick, really competitive. It looks very, very close. We won’t know until next week, truly exactly where we stand, but we know that we’ve got work to do. Everyone is just heads down.

“I’ve been really inspired and really encouraged by my colleagues, just how focused everybody is and how hard working everyone is, and getting to know everyone in the garage, the night shift crew, you know, just how their processes and how they like to work. It’s this, yeah, it just takes time.”

It’s not just a new team and environment Hamilton is adjusting to after over a decade with Mercedes, it’s also a new car with different DNA and a very different power unit.

Asked to evaluate the differences in driving a Ferrari, the British driver said, “They’re very well built, and massively different in characteristics so, rather than just jumping into a different car to this car and having it exactly the same, it’s been refreshing to have something different, to learn different ways in which you have to drive the car, different requirements to how you approach corners.

“The engine has a different tone, a different feel, different drivability, and I’ve been driving Mercedes for so long – which was such a great power unit – and it’s great to see that Ferrari also have a great power unit.

“It’s something that I’m spending time with the engineers from the engine department and learning about how the processes they take for reliability and power. That’s a process in itself, but so far it’s been really great.”

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