Lewis Hamilton could retire from Formula 1 at the end of the F1 2025 season if his Ferrari situation does not improve soon.

That is the claim of Ralf Schumacher, the former F1 driver, who fears Hamilton may soon decide: “I’m not doing this to myself anymore.”

Could Lewis Hamilton retire at the end of F1 2025?

Hamilton has had a largely lacklustre start to his Ferrari career following his blockbuster move from Mercedes last winter.

The seven-time World Champion took an early victory for Ferrari in the Chinese Grand Prix sprint race, but Hamilton’s joy soon turned to disappointment when he was disqualified from the main race 24 hours later.

It means Hamilton has failed to finish higher than fifth across the first five races of the new season, with the 40-year-old finishing last weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix a distant seventh, 30.969 seconds behind team-mate Charles Leclerc, who scooped the team’s first podium of F1 2025 with third place.

Lewis Hamilton vs Charles Leclerc: Ferrari head-to-head scores for F1 2025

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

The exact length of Hamilton’s multi-year contract was not specified when his move from Mercedes was announced in February 2024, with his Ferrari deal widely believed to run until the end of the F1 2026 season.

Appearing on Sky Germany’s Backstage Pit Lane podcast, however, Schumacher – the brother of Michael Schumacher, the Ferrari icon and only other driver in F1 history to win seven titles – believes Hamilton could opt to walk away at the end of this year.

Schumacher said: “He just can’t cope with the car. We talk a lot about Lando Norris, but it’s almost worse with him.

“You can see that he’s really slumped over. If you’re standing there at some point and have no more resources and are permanently slower, then you lose everything.

“I know from my own experience: if it goes on like this, it’s no fun anymore.

“Then at some point, he wakes up in the morning and thinks to himself: ‘Why am I doing this to myself? I’m no longer having fun, I can’t do it anymore. I’m getting in the way of my team.’

“If it goes on like this, there’s a risk that at some point he’ll say: ‘Look, I don’t want this anymore. I want to live my life now, I’m 40 years old. I’m so rich, I’m not doing this to myself anymore. Obviously it’s not working out for some reason.’

“It’s a huge project that Ferrari and Hamilton had in mind, but at the moment he’s a long way away from Charles Leclerc.

“I wouldn’t have thought it would be so extreme.

“However, China also showed that as soon as he gets into the car and the track and the car suit him, he delivers.

“There’s still something to come.”

Schumacher’s comments come after Fred Vasseur, the Ferrari team principal, insisted that he remains fully behind Hamilton despite the driver telling media including PlanetF1.com in Jeddah that his bosses are not happy with his performance level.

Vasseur said: “I will be 2,000 percent behind him.

“I will give him support and we will start from tomorrow morning to try to find solutions and reasons and to work on it early in the morning.

“But honestly, I am not too worried.

“If you have a look at what he did in China or what he did in the race in Bahrain last week, or even on the first part of the session in this weekend, the potential is there for sure.

“We just have to adjust the balance because we are, collectively, Lewis and us, we are struggling with the balance of his car and [how] he is working the tyres.

“It’s a kind of negative spot but I think the potential of the car is there and we will try to solve that.”

More on Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari from PlanetF1.com

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Vasseur took exception to the suggestion by a reporter that Hamilton’s form has dropped off dramatically, pointing to the fluctuations of Max Verstappen and Red Bull in the early weeks of the new season.

He snapped: “It’s not dramatically.

“We did five races so far. I know that you want to have the big headlines tomorrow that ‘Fred said this.’

“But this is f***ing bull***t. At the end of the day, we are in competition. You have ups and downs.

“When we have ups, we are not World Champions. When we have downs, we are not nowhere. It’s just a competition.

“I’m not sure that you draw the same conclusion with Max last week when he was seventh [in Bahrain].

“It is like it is. The competition is tight.

“You have 10 cars and a couple of tenths. Have a look at Max. He won in Japan. He finished 30 seconds behind [Oscar] Piastri in Bahrain and in Saudi Arabia he was P2 and had pole position.

“We just have to stay calm. You can do whatever you want. I don’t want to worry for you. At least for us as a team, we have to work step by step.

“I think it paid off last year to do hundredths of seconds and hundredths of seconds and we need to keep the same approach.

“I will never be the guy who says we are World Champions or we are nowhere.

“We are a team. We are struggling on the weekend, we have good results on the weekend.

“It’s just that we have to improve step by step and stay calm.”

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