The feelings inside Ferrari’s two garages are far from identical. On one side, there is Charles Leclerc, who managed to bring home Ferrari’s first podium of the season in Jeddah; on the other, Lewis Hamilton, who seems unable to find a way out of a very complicated start to 2025.
The Briton, except for his Sprint Race win in China, is not comfortable with the SF-25, and the fluctuating performances in qualifying and races are clear evidence of it. Even last year, the number 44 struggled to find performance on a single lap, only to recover during the race. This pattern has repeated itself in the first five races of this championship, highlighting how Hamilton’s adaptation process at Ferrari is proving more difficult than expected.
Lewis Hamilton on the decline?
In his usual end-of-weekend commentary on the Motorsport.com YouTube channel, Gian Carlo Minardi commented on Ferrari’s current situation. “Leclerc had a fantastic race and managed to keep Lando Norris behind. He managed the medium tyres very well in the first part of the race, and that made the difference in the final result. Hamilton, apart from helping Charles Leclerc in his duel with Norris, had a very anonymous race. I see him struggling a lot. When you change team and working methods, it’s not easy, and Ferrari is mentally very stressful. At Mercedes, he was at home, and I hope he is not in his decline phase. He seemed more like a driver who doesn’t know where to put his hands than a ‘washed-up’ one. You can see it because in the race he alternates moments where he goes fast and others where he struggles; he simply is not in control of the car,” said the Italian entrepreneur.
“There is a lot of work to be done at Ferrari, and the gap to the top is still significant. They need to support the drivers, and I hope that at Imola they will bring the updates needed to close the gap to McLaren,” Minardi added.
Leave a Reply