Lewis Hamilton has a mammoth task ahead of him to help lead a Formula 1 team which hasn’t won a championship for 17 years back to the front.
Ferrari were agonisingly close to breaking their duck in 2024, as McLaren pipped them to the constructors’ championship by just 14 points.
Hamilton joins them at a good time, as they are building some positive momentum and should be able to compete for a title again in 2025.
They also need to keep one eye on the 2026 F1 regulations where there is an opportunity for big long term gains over their rivals.
Hamilton’s testing data stunned Karun Chandhok and the Brit looked both ‘energised’ and ‘reinvigorated’ according to the pundit.
Pairing him with a talented young teammate could be dangerous though. Fred Vasseur admitted Ferrari have to be careful with Hamilton and Charles Leclerc as they fight each other for top honours.
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Lewis Hamilton cannot replicate Michael Schumacher’s ‘valuable’ work at Ferrari
Modern Formula 1 has seen the amount of time that teams are permitted to test for seemingly shrink every year.
Hamilton has had just three full days of running before being sent into a competitive environment for the first time at the Australian Grand Prix.
As if debuting with a new team, speaking a new language and meeting new faces wasn’t enough of a challenge, he also has very little preparation in a completely new machine.
Ralf Schumacher thinks it’s a disadvantage, considering that his brother Michael learned so much from it while he won five championships with the team.
“Michael clocked up thousands of kilometers day and night to help Ferrari progress. Simulators cannot replace this valuable work today,” he told F1-insider.com.
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Ralf Schumacher doesn’t understand the hype behind Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari move
Currently tied with Schumacher for the most titles in history, Hamilton is aiming for a seventh at the team where the German achieved so much of his success over 20 years ago.
It would be a near-perfect ending to his career, but he hasn’t won a title for five years now and is running out of time to do so.
His contract sees him through the next two seasons, but after that, there are no guarantees. Retirement may be looming.
Schumacher doesn’t get the hype around Hamilton and Ferrari, with Ralf suggesting that an eighth title cannot happen.
Having a teammate like Leclerc will make it difficult, but he’s facing one of the greatest of all time. If anyone can find a way, it might be him.
