Lewis Hamilton’s Brazil unravelled fast: a clumsy opening lap, a broken front wing, a time penalty and, finally, the red car wheeled back into the garage. By the time the Ferrari driver walked out of Interlagos, the seven-time champion called it what it felt like: a nightmare.
Hamilton’s Sunday started 13th after a flat qualifying, a sharp contrast to Saturday’s Sprint where he hauled from 11th to seventh and looked, for a moment, like he’d found some rhythm. Anything gained there evaporated when the lights went out. A tap from Carlos Sainz helped shuffle Hamilton down to 17th on lap one, and while he set about recovering, he tangled with Franco Colapinto and tore up his front wing.
The stewards pinned the blame on Hamilton and handed him five seconds. He served it, then parked the SF-25 for good. Frustration poured out.
“I mean this is a nightmare,” he said on Sky after retiring. “Between the dream of driving for this amazing team and the nightmare of the results we’ve had… it’s challenging.”
Interlagos is usually friendly to overtakers, but Hamilton didn’t see it that way after a sticky qualifying left him mired in traffic. “You can’t overtake,” he’d said earlier in the weekend, and his race did little to change the mood.
Still, the 40-year-old wasn’t about to wallow. He promised to reset before Las Vegas, the first stop in a bruising three-race sprint to the flag. “Tomorrow I’ll get back up. Keep training, keep working with the team. I really wanted to get them good points this weekend but I’ll come back as strong as I can in the next race and try to recover.”
The Ferrari garage had little to celebrate. Charles Leclerc had put the other red car third on the grid and looked punchy on one lap, but he too retired on Sunday and any deeper read on race pace disappeared with him. That glimmer in qualifying is where Hamilton chose to hang his hat. “It would be wrong to say there are no positives,” he told Viaplay. “If you look at Charles’ performance in qualifying, it shows the car does have some pace in it. We’re having to fight through the hardships at the moment. I truly still believe in this team and what we can achieve together.”
That resolve will be tested. Zoom out and Brazil felt like a snapshot of Hamilton’s first season in red: the glimpses are there, but they’re fleeting and offset by messy Saturdays or Sunday scuffles. Leclerc has had the upper hand more often than not, and as the championship barrels toward Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, Hamilton is staring at another head-to-head defeat to a teammate. If it lands that way, it would be just the fourth time in his career—and the third in four seasons—that he’s been outscored in-house.
There’s also an unwanted milestone lurking. Unless Hamilton can turn one of the final three into a podium, 2025 would become his first F1 season without a grand prix top-three since he joined the grid in 2007. That’s the statistical weight hanging over every scrappy midfield battle he finds himself in now.
The encouraging note for Ferrari is that raw speed hasn’t completely vanished: Leclerc’s qualifying form proved that. The discouraging part is that the SF-25’s good days haven’t been landing when Hamilton needs them most. And when you start outside the top 10 at Interlagos, you invite chaos—especially into Turn 1, where Hamilton’s afternoon began to fray.
Brazil won’t define Hamilton’s Ferrari switch, but it does tighten the narrative. The car can be quick, the execution isn’t consistent, and the margins are punishing. Now comes the neon test in Las Vegas, where low grip, long straights and a cool night surface could hand Ferrari a reset—or another long debrief.
Hamilton’s words suggest the fight’s still there. The problem is, so is the clock. Three races to win back the garage, nick a podium, and change the tone of a season that, on days like this, has felt far longer than the calendar says.
