New Delhi: It sent waves around the Formula One world when Lewis Hamilton announced his intention to move to Ferrari after spending his entire career with McLaren first and then Mercedes. It was Hamilton’s dream to race for Ferrari. Six months after officially moving to the Maranello-based team, the British driver is still searching for his first win in the Red. Coming to Silverstone, where Hamilton has the most wins (9), for the first time, he finds himself not the favourite.
Hamilton has said that he is very happy with the team, and he has been working extra hard to push himself to the front. Yet, his best finish in the season remains coming fourth in the Austrian Grand Prix last week and a sprint race win in China. His best qualifying so far has been fourth in Monaco and Austria. He stands in sixth place in the driver’s championship, right behind his teammate Charles Leclerc, who has scored 28 points more. Leclerc’s performance both in qualifying and in the race has been better than his veteran teammate.
Lewis Hamilton’s chase for an eighth title
A positive weekend for the team 👊 pic.twitter.com/2VBExhQOqI
— Scuderia Ferrari HP (@ScuderiaFerrari) June 29, 2025
Hamilton’s main reason for coming to Ferrarin was to take home a record eighth world championship title. For Ferrari, chasing the constructors’ championship, having lost last season to McLaren by only a few points, bringing the 40-year-old on board was a no-brainer. At the start, Ferrari did have a good hold on the Driver’s Championship, though not breathing down McLaren’s neck, while Hamilton had good pace.
In the points table, they might be second, but Ferrari are still 207 points behind defending champions McLaren. Points might be the least of their problems because when it comes to pace, Ferrari are in much more tatters. Currently, they are 0.393 seconds behind in average time gaps to McLaren, standing fourth, with Red Bull and Mercedes much closer to the Papaya team. At the halfway mark, both Hamilton and Ferrari have fallen much behind the target.
Hamilton clearly isn’t Ferrari’s fastest driver and in terms of pace he is further behind Leclerc than he was from his former teammate George Russell last year at Mercedes. 2024 was a disaster for Hamilton who would have liked to end his year at the Mercedes on a good note.
Hamilton feels he is still adapting to the team and the transition he felt would always have taken time. He mentioned that Ferrari as a team operates differently as a team than what is usual to him. They run their car in a different manner and the car is much different than the Mercedes one.
He has mentioned that different teams set their cars differently, and there has been a lot of back and forth in recent times with his race engineers on how things have best worked for him and what has best served at Ferrari. In his own words, he said, “It’s interesting to see how different teams work and operate. How they set the car up is completely different.”
Hamilton still believes that the curve has been upward. In the first seven races, he qualified in the top five only once. However, from Monaco, he has been fourth twice and fifth twice. The gap between him and Leclerc has also reduced from 0.227 seconds to 0.087 seconds.
Hamilton and Ferrari’s string of poor luck
In Monaco, though the Briton qualified fourth, but got a three-place penalty due to a miscommunication from his engineer, on a track where you can’t overtake very easily. In Spain, he ran a brilliant race in fourth until Mercedes outstrategised him with the two Ferraris having problems in the latter part of the race. In Canada, there was floor damage for Hamilton after he hit a groundhog in the eighth lap of the race, which cost him some valuable 0.5 seconds in each lap, despite having outqualified his teammate.
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur has come under fire with many questioning his place, but the Frenchman has pointed out these incidents that have ultimately cost the team in rede their season. Vasseur has defended his team even after the Italian press gave some strong remarks ahead of the Canadian GP.
Ferrari faced a lot of heat when Leclerc and Hamilton qualified 11th and 12th in their first home race at Imola with Monegasue saying that they were nowhere close to a good place. Vasseur still believes that the car with upgrades more recently has improved well, though even he admitted that McLaren were too good in the Constructor’s championship race. It is true, however, that two races into the season, they are miles behind Red Bull and Mercedes, but have managed to make a turnaround.
They do have drivers who despite their place in the championship have managed to put Ferrari ahead of Red Bull and Mercedes in the second place. For Hamilton, this is a building block for the 2026 season with new rules bringing revised cars and engines, and Ferrari is predicted to be fighting.
Coming to the British Grand Prix, at home, Hamilton is hard to challenge, and this has often been the case. He comes on a positive note, having finished fourth in Austria. If it rains, it is often the experienced drivers here who give all the rookies a run for their money.