Ferrari plays down Hamilton ‘drama’ after bruising first year: ‘It looks worse than it is’
Lewis Hamilton’s first season in red ended with more sighs than silverware, yet inside Ferrari there’s little sense of a broken marriage. If anything, they insist, the headlines have painted a harsher picture than reality.
After a year that brought Ferrari none of the big trophies and Hamilton just a single highlight—a Sprint win in China—the seven-time champion finished sixth in the standings, one spot behind Charles Leclerc. The Monegasque had seven podiums across the year and outscored Hamilton by 86 points. That gap, plus a streak of three Q1 exits to close out the season and some downbeat interviews, fed the narrative that the Hamilton-Ferrari union was already creaking.
Matteo Togninalli, Ferrari’s head of track engineering, isn’t buying it.
“What you see from the outside is much worse than what it is,” he told reporters late in the season. “The relationship we’re building with Lewis is extremely positive.”
This was never going to be plug-and-play. Hamilton spent a decade at Mercedes, engineered his working life around a familiar system, and arrived at Maranello just as Ferrari produced a car less competitive than its 2024 predecessor. That’s a cocktail for frustration, not fireworks.
“It’s very difficult for both sides,” Togninalli said. “Every team operates slightly differently. You’re used to certain people, a certain way of doing things. And if you add that we didn’t achieve the target of fighting for the world championship, you create this situation.”
Pressure ramped up as the year wore on, not least when Ferrari chairman John Elkann urged his drivers to “speak less and concentrate on driving”—a comment that felt aimed more at Hamilton than Leclerc. Hamilton, candid as ever, didn’t hide his struggles connecting with the SF-25, particularly over one lap when confidence evaporated.
Inside the garage, the tone is calmer. Togninalli said the working relationship had moved “in leaps and bounds” since those first early weekends together.
“You spend 10 years with the same people, and after 10 months we already have a very strong team,” he said. “Results always help. We’re racers. When we lose, the frustration is massive. But we accept we need some time to adapt to each other.”
Hamilton’s not asking for sympathy. He’s asking for a reset—and he’s getting one. The ground-effect era he’s endured since 2022 is ending, and he didn’t sugarcoat his feelings in Abu Dhabi: “There’s not a single thing I’ll miss about these cars, simple as that.”
The 2026 regulations will arrive soon enough, but there’s a full winter to navigate first. Hamilton’s been clear he intends to tighten up everything around him: the way he feeds back, how he and Ferrari communicate, and the logistics off-track that can make or break rhythm over a 24-race slog.
“We just need to analyse where we’ve been, what’s been good, and where we can improve,” he said. “I’ve highlighted them. It’s sitting down with the team at the end of the year. It’s also looking at my personal team, away from the track—timing, traveling, all these things—to make it more efficient. I’ll do the same with the team.”
For anyone muttering about an early exit, Hamilton brushed off the retirement chatter. Motivation isn’t the issue.
“It’s the love for what you do. It’s love for racing,” he said. “It’s an amazing support from people around me, my fans. It’s that constant keeping an eye on the dream. I still have a dream.”
Here’s the thing: both Ferrari and Hamilton know how this works. Perception is hostage to results, and Ferrari had precious few in 2025. Hamilton’s peaks were flashes, his troughs public. Leclerc, in smoother sync with the car, carried the heavier scoring load. None of that means the project is misguided.
If Ferrari deliver a car that behaves—and Hamilton gets comfortable carving lap time from it—the noise will evaporate. That’s the bet Togninalli and co. are making: that the relationship is sturdier than the mood music, and that the hard yards laid this year become useful miles when the slate is wiped clean in 2026.
Between now and then, Ferrari need to give Hamilton something he can feel through the seat, not just the steering wheel. Hamilton needs to make the SF-25’s successor feel like home. Both sides are saying the right things. The next car has to do the talking.
For now, forget the melodrama. Ferrari and Hamilton aren’t imploding; they’re in the grind stage—awkward at times, occasionally ugly, but far from done.
