Although every intra-team battle during the 2025 Formula 1 season is going to be fascinating, there’s one in particular that stands out amongst the rest.
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur will agree with F1’s fans that he has the strongest driver line-up on the grid.
Charles Leclerc managed to defeat Carlos Sainz in his head-to-head battle in 2024 but faces a much more distinguished rival this year.
Lewis Hamilton arrives at Ferrari hopes to break Michael Schumacher’s record of seven world championships titles with the team that gave the German so much success.
Hamilton will begin testing Ferrari’s cars soon, but will only have one-and-a-half days of official running in Bahrain to get up to speed before the season starts in Australia.
The aim for the 40-year-old is to get adjusted to his new surroundings as quickly as possible.
He’s surrounded by new engineers and mechanics who will communicate with him in English although Hamilton has started learning Italian phrases to try and ease any translation issues.
However, he will be at a disadvantage compared to Leclerc who speaks fluent Italian and already has an established reputation with hundreds of people in the factory and the garage.
How Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc could ‘surprise’ each other in 2025
James Allen was speaking on his podcast ahead of Ferrari’s intra-team battle beginning in March.
He spoke about the differing strengths each driver has and talking about how they might react to see each other’s driving styles up close for the first time, he said: “The points get given out on the Sunday, so you need a car that if you divide a race into three stints, roughly 100 kilometres each stint, you’ve got to make the tyres work for that period of time.
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“But one of the things that’s going to be really interesting for me about this is I think Lewis will be quite surprised how fast Leclerc is in qualifying like you said.
“But I think Leclerc will be surprised how fast Lewis is over a race distance because for my money he’s still right up there amongst the absolute fastest guys on a race distance, Lewis. So that’ll be really interesting.”
Leclerc is considered one of F1’s best qualifiers, and while Hamilton will be well aware of that, he’ll see first-hand for the first time how he achieves such impressive one-lap pace.
However, while Hamilton struggled in qualifying last year, he proved in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi that he’s no slouch over a full race distance.
Ferrari will hope Hamilton and Leclerc’s strengths complement each other during 2025 F1 season
Vasseur will be hoping that with Leclerc’s qualifying pace and Hamilton’s ability to deliver exceptional race results, Ferrari will be favourites for the Constructors’ Championship.
That requires both drivers to be willing to work together which shouldn’t be a problem to begin with.
Leclerc has admitted his relationship with Hamilton will be different to Sainz’s but the pair were rarely battling each other for victories during their four years together.
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If Ferrari are as strong as expected, Leclerc and Hamilton could end up side-by-side at the front of the grid more often than not.
It then becomes Vasseur’s job to keep both drivers working towards a common goal rather than putting themselves first.
That’s not going to be an easy task considering how selfish racing drivers are trained to be throughout their careers and Hamilton and Leclerc are no exceptions when victories are on the line.
