Motorsport cult hero, Juan Pablo Montoya, has advised Ferrari to focus on and build their 2025 Formula 1 car around Lewis Hamilton and not Charles Leclerc as the seven-time world champion heads to Italy at the end of the season.
The F1 world was shocked in February when the Brit announced he was quitting the Silver Arrows, ending an 11-year relationship with the works team in which he enjoyed unprecedented success.
The 39-year-old is reportedly on a major contract with the Maranello-based outfit totalling an estimated $446m (£341.2m) of John Elkann’s $2.61 billion net worth and an ambassadorship as he will likely complete his career in the iconic red cars.
So as he heads into his final six races with Toto Wolff and Brackley at the 2024 United States GP, hosted at the Circuit of the Americas, Montoya called for Ferrari to immediately begin to back the 105-time Grand Prix winner over their own star talent.
“If Ferrari really wants to succeed, they really need to listen to what Lewis needs and build a car around him that Lewis wants,” Montoya told Gambling Zone, calling for Ferrari to focus on Hamilton and not Leclerc. “I think we’ll see the Lewis of old.
“He’s going to be out with a revenge to prove everybody wrong and show everybody they were wrong about him. I think if everything lines up, I think Lewis can be a huge threat for a championship.”
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Hamilton’s form since the 2021 Abu Dhabi GP has been marked by struggles in qualifying as he finds himself more than matched by George Russell over one lap and in 2024, will lose the head-to-head for the first time in his career.
However, his race pace and mastery of the tyres still remains supreme and is only rivalled by Max Verstappen. It means that if the man with 104 pole positions figures out how to hook up his car to the track in Q3, he will be a force to be reckoned with again.
The F1 veteran has admitted that he has struggled to adapt his driving style to suit qualifying, revealing that the Pirelli tyres do not like his aggressive braking style and demands of rotation throughout one lap.
Can Ferrari fight for the F1 2025 titles with Hamilton and Leclerc?
Ferrari have not won a constructors’ championship since 2008 and one has to go back even further for their last drivers’ championship, which was won 20 years ago by Michael Schumacher in 2004.
So Hamilton has huge expectations on his shoulders if he aims to surpass the great German’s total of seven and bathe himself in eternal glory by bringing the trophies back to Italy, but fortunately Leclerc believes they can do it.
“Yes. That will be the headline,” Leclerc told The Race and ESPN. “Obviously it is a constant process that keeps evolving and the goal is to always make it better.
“So I would say that 2025 will be good, 2026 will be better and 2027 will be even better and we optimise everything.
“But it’s all relative. There is not one team that is getting worse from one year to the other. It’s how much of a step forward the others have done.”
