Haas’ Esteban Ocon can understand why Lewis Hamilton is requiring time to adjust from Mercedes to Ferrari machinery.

As a former Mercedes reserve driver who now races for the Ferrari-customer Haas team, Ocon knows for himself the differences between cars influenced by those two manufacturers, as he explained how adapting to change becomes harder with F1 experience, while the current F1 cars are not “forgiving” and will reward only one style.

Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari: Experience a drawback?

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Blackstock

Hamilton arrived at Ferrari to great fanfare for F1 2025, having called time on his record-breaking Mercedes career to realise a childhood dream in Ferrari red. However, yet to finish a grand prix ahead of team-mate Charles Leclerc and with qualifying remaining an issue, it has been an underwhelming start to Ferrari life for Hamilton.

And ahead of Round 6 in Miami, Ocon was asked if he is surprised to see Hamilton still struggling, or whether he felt people underestimate the size of the challenge.

Ocon was the Mercedes reserve driver in 2019 – the year Hamilton won his fifth of six World Championships with Mercedes and seven overall – while for F1 2025, Ocon joined Haas, the team which uses every permitted Ferrari part under the terms of their technical alliance.

Ocon has made a strong start to his career with Haas, collecting 14 points, which places him P9 in the Drivers’ Championship while Hamilton is seventh.

“Yeah, I think it’s very difficult,” Ocon told the media, including PlanetF1.com, of Hamilton’s transition from Mercedes to Ferrari. “And especially when you change car philosophy, because the Haas car or the Ferrari car, you know, have a lot of similarities.

“So I can relate a little bit to Lewis on that side, having driven the Merc as well in the past. So it’s a very different way of driving the car or extracting the potential of it. And yeah, the car feels very different.

“So it’s not easy, for sure, to adapt to that, but I’m sure he will find a way very quickly.

“And in the meantime, I also have to improve quite a lot of things as well still, you know, in the way of doing.

“It’s been five races, so things are getting more to normal. There’s more routine now going on, and how we prepare weekends, and how I feel I drive the car, I know straight away when something is not quite right, or where it should be compared to before, where I thought it was normality now.

“So, yeah, the more you drive, the more you learn. But there is at some point, you know, there is no adapting to it. You just have to deal with it.”

While on first thought, experience would be an asset to an F1 driver changing teams, Ocon explained that this is certainly not the case.

And he said this applies to himself, Hamilton and the driver who Hamilton replaced at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz, who took a while to get up to speed at Williams.

Asked if that adjustment gets easier with age and more team changes, Ocon replied: “I think it’s more the opposite way. I think if you come from like junior formulas, and you go straight into that car, you put everything that you learnt away and you just go into it and you learn the new thing again.

“Now with our experience, I mean, Lewis has much more experience than me, he’s drove a lot of different cars, but a lot of the same one as well for a long time. So yeah, I can understand why it’s not easy, and I know it’s also not easy for me, or for Carlos.”

Lewis Hamilton vs Charles Leclerc head-to-head

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

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

Plus, Ocon says that the ground effect F1 cars – in place since 2022 – are “for sure” harder to drive, and for a driver like Hamilton who has built up his driving style over almost two decades in Formula 1, that can be a big problem.

“I don’t think they are forgiving these cars at all, the way they are stiff, how they bounce, how these tyres react,” Ocon claimed. “They are better these tyres, but they always tend to understeer quite a lot in a mid-corner.

“So, yeah, I don’t think there is two ways of driving. You need to go with one way. There is no other direction that you can drive the car. You need to choose the quickest way, and that’s it.”

F1 2025 marks the final season with the current regulations, with smaller, lighter cars, powered by an engine featuring a 50/50 split between electrical power and an internal combustion engine running on fully-sustainable biofuels, set to arrive for F1 2026.

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