Hamilton disappointment
Lewis Hamilton has not hidden his frustration during his first year at Ferrari, which has certainly fallen short of both his and the team’s expectations. The seven-time world champion admitted that settling in with the Maranello team took some time, and the SF-25 was not exactly the best car to highlight Lewis Hamilton’s strengths. The decisive test to clear the many questions and doubts surrounding the English driver will be the next season, in which he will be expected to reverse the negative results—assuming Ferrari’s performance allows it.
A very interesting analysis
Speaking at the Ferrari Club Abbiategrasso, where he received the Cavallino 2025 award, Aldo Costa—former Ferrari technical director and also a key Mercedes engineer for eight years—shared his insight on Lewis Hamilton’s situation, having worked alongside him during the successful Silver Arrows era.
“Lewis is very much an Englishman, he has always only worked in England. Like me, being Italian and never having worked abroad,” Aldo Costa explained in statements reported on Umberto Zapelloni’s blog (who interviewed him). He added: “The first few months for Lewis must have been extremely tough, adapting to the team’s mechanisms and chasing competitiveness. Lewis is someone who needs to work with a fairly small group of people, trusting them completely—his race engineer, technical director, chief designer—and he must feel that these people are working with him to push him to win.
“He is the team’s standard-bearer, and he must feel in this position. If he doesn’t feel that way, he loses some performance. He likes the idea of being the hero with the entire team behind him. I understand he may have faced difficulties also because he found a teammate who was very fast, knew the team for years, and was both loved and respected. With someone like him, you need to be very careful, motivate him, and support him,” advised the Italian engineer.
