Ferrari didn’t sign Lewis Hamilton to relearn the job. Yet in his first season in red, the seven-time champion is wrestling with a car and—if you believe Juan Pablo Montoya—a culture.
Hamilton’s headline results so far? A sprint race win and another sprint podium. Meanwhile, Charles Leclerc has stacked up five podiums on Sundays, which keeps the spotlight fixed on the split-screen at Ferrari: same machinery, different outcomes.
Montoya, never one to sugarcoat, thinks it’s less about rust and more about a clash in approach behind the garage doors. Speaking on his MontoyoAS show for AS Colombia, he argued that Hamilton’s struggles aren’t solely on the driver. In his view, Ferrari’s engineers are asking a driver who’s honed a specific style for years to bend to a car that doesn’t fully deserve that kind of faith. Translation: don’t tell a proven champion to drive around problems when the problems are baked in.
He pointed to Carlos Sainz’s bedding-in period as context. Sainz’s first year at Maranello was bumpy too, and Montoya suggested that had Ferrari delayed its Hamilton move by a year—after Sainz found his footing—the decision might have looked different. The underlying message: patience, on both sides of the garage.
There’s no denying the SF-25 has been a handful. The suspension has been fussy, and once Ferrari lifted the ride height after that Chinese Grand Prix disqualification for plank wear, the car’s become more wayward over longer stints. Leclerc’s results speak to familiarity and muscle memory inside Ferrari’s way of working; Hamilton, by contrast, is still translating. It’s not unlike last season, when he wrung respectable days out of a non-dominant Mercedes—only now the operating window seems even narrower.
Montoya’s take is simple but pointed: Hamilton knows how to extract pace his way. If the message from the headset is “drive it differently,” the team better be sure the car backs up that demand. Because if the car isn’t fundamentally good, you’re not negotiating; you’re compromising.
Hamilton, ever the long-game player, may well be eyeing 2026’s reset as the moment to level the field again. But 2025 still matters, both for confidence and for the mechanics of trust. Ferrari hired Hamilton for Sundays. To get there, they might need to meet him halfway.
