Budapest can be a brutal mirror. Lewis Hamilton stared into it after qualifying, called himself “useless,” and trudged to a twelfth-place finish that underlined just how jagged his first year in red has been. Jo Ramirez, the long-time McLaren lynchpin who’s seen champions wobble and right themselves, sought Hamilton out in the paddock and delivered a simple message: bad days happen — don’t let one define you.
“I spoke to him briefly in Budapest because he was beating himself up so much,” Ramirez told ESPN MX. “I said: ‘Lewis, you can’t say that or you can’t do that. [You] had a bad day. Everyone has a bad day at the office, but you’re going to make up for it.’”
Hungary was ugly. While Charles Leclerc stuck the sister Ferrari on pole for the first time this season, Hamilton dropped out in Q2 and then never recovered in the race. “It’s just me every time,” he told Sky F1. “I’m useless, absolutely useless… They probably need to change driver.” When those remarks were put back to him on Sunday night, Hamilton cut it short: “I have nothing else to say,” adding only that he “hopefully” would be back after the summer break for Zandvoort.
Ramirez understands how a change of environment can gnaw at a driver’s instincts. Hamilton has spent his entire F1 career inside English-team structures — McLaren, then Mercedes’ Brackley machine. Ferrari is different by design, and he’s also racing with a non‑Mercedes power unit for the first time. “He’s a guy who has nothing to prove,” Ramirez said. “But now he’s in an Italian team where he doesn’t feel comfortable. The working system is different… he’s struggling and we can see that.”
That’s the supportive half. The sting came next. Hamilton’s Ferrari deal runs multi-year, widely understood to cover at least through 2026, but the 39-year-old’s form has re-lit the retirement chatter around 2025. “I don’t know what will happen to him,” Ramirez admitted. “So, if he doesn’t recover, maybe we won’t have him next year, which would be a shame.”
As it stands, Hamilton sits sixth in the standings, 42 points behind Leclerc. That’s not catastrophic, but when the other car is on pole and you’re calling for your own replacement, it reads loud. For a driver wired like Hamilton, that kind of spiral is both familiar and dangerous: he’s used it as fuel before, yet the Ferrari learning curve and a season of scrappy Sundays can drain even the most stubborn confidence.
The next phase is simple, if not easy. Ferrari have to steady the weekends around him; Hamilton has to stop swinging at ghosts. Budapest can linger if you let it. Zandvoort’s the reset.
