Lewis Hamilton suggests Ferrari set the car up for a ‘different’ driver as he opens up on why his transition from Mercedes is causing problems in Italy, confessing he is used to a different driving style.
The Brit drove for the Silver Arrows for 11 years before dramatically switching to the Prancing Horse at the start of 2025 in his pursuit of a record-breaking eighth world title to eclipse the legendary Michael Schumacher.
However, what was a mouth-watering partnership at the beginning of the year has proven to be far murkier than many anticipated, with the 40-year-old struggling to get the best out of his SF-25 compared of Charles Leclerc.
Although he experienced the highs of Sprint Pole and Sprint Race victory in China in March, he has found himself out-qualified by his 27-year-old colleague 4-1 and out-raced 5-0 too.
Issues regarding understanding how to set the car up, how to maximise the pace on different fuel levels and tyre loads and fundamentally how to drive a new engine for the first time in his career have left him languishing behind on pace. Not catastrophically, but substantially.
And Hamilton suggests it’s both a driver and a team issue by revealing Ferrari still set the car up for a ‘different’ driver as the ghost of Carlos Sainz still lingers over the team, although he confesses he has to move towards the car too.
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“Many things, lots of different things. There’s not one particular issue,” Hamilton told members of the media, including Total-Motorsport.com. “When I joined Mercedes, the first six months were tough, getting attuned to working with new people.
“Obviously, the engineers that I’m working with now are used to setting up a car for a different driver and a different driving style; and I’m used to driving a car with a different driving style.
“So, it’s just a combination of a bunch of different things.”
Sainz is not known for being a supreme natural talent, compared to the very elite drivers on the grid such as Hamilton, Leclerc or Max Verstappen, but manages to make himself competitive through a meticulous understanding of data and telemetry.
The Spaniard makes working with his engineers one of the defining parts of his racing identity, and raced for Ferrari from 2021-2024 as he managed to secure four Grand Prix wins. His DNA no doubt still lingers within Maranello’s modern racing identity.
For example, Riccardo Adami now serving as Hamilton’s race engineer, elements of his relationship with Sainz still remain as the Italian has to adapt to how his new driver prefers to communicate by providing limited, clear and concise information – as evidenced by their rocky exchange at the 2025 Australian GP.
Hamilton ‘consciously’ working hard to adjust to Ferrari ahead of F1 2025 Miami GP
That’s not to say that Hamilton doesn’t work with his engineers. The Brit is known for being one of the first drivers to arrive at the track and one of the very last to leave as he chases every tenth possible on the table.
He is also known for radically changing his set-ups throughout the weekend and managing to make them work, with a reputation for pushing the team to the very limits of their capabilities.
But he is regarded as one of the greatest drivers of all-time for a reason and part of that is his ability for his instinctive feeling for the car offering him a rare talent for adapting to difficult situations and bailing him out of tight spots.
Fans can spot this through his unique feel for the brakes, his tremendous wet weather performances or his mastery of the tyres; the latter only matched or rivalled by Verstappen, the current and defending four-time world champion.
So how does he navigate this situation when he’s trying to work through his problems? The 104-time pole sitter reveals he is working both actively and subconsciously to try to understand the first Ferrari car of his career.
“I would say you’re generally always a mixture of the two,” Hamilton added at the Miami International Autodrome. “But I’m definitely working hard to adjust to this one for sure.”
