Lewis Hamilton cool after Leclerc’s year-one thrashing: “I’m not concerned”
Lewis Hamilton’s first season in red didn’t read like one of his greatest hits. No podiums across a full campaign for the first time in his career, a teammate who lived on the rostrum by comparison, and a Ferrari that never quite found its stride. Charles Leclerc won the internal battle comfortably. Hamilton? He was unfussed.
“I’m not concerned about it, no,” Hamilton said when asked if the balance of power at Ferrari this year tells us anything about 2026.
Leclerc has been embedded at Maranello since 2019 and it showed. He strung together a stack of podiums and outscored Hamilton by a wide margin, the Monegasque effectively the constant in a team that spent much of 2025 looking inward and retooling. Hamilton’s lone bright spot was the China Sprint win — Ferrari’s only victory of any kind this year — but Sundays were lean.
That gap didn’t rattle him. Hamilton framed the year as what it was: a bedding-in exercise inside a teammate’s house.
“Obviously, Charles has done a great job. He’s been there for seven years. He’s got a team around him that he’s worked with for many years. So, it’s a well-oiled machine,” Hamilton said. “On my side, it’s a new group of people. For me, it’s a new environment that I’m still getting used to working with. Then I had another new member halfway through the year. So, we’re all working as hard as we can, but getting that to work as well as someone that’s had it for several years is not… you don’t just do it like that. It takes a bit of time.”
Ferrari, for their part, leaned into the future early. With the 2026 regulations looming — new aero, new power unit split, smaller, lighter cars, the whole shebang — the Scuderia shifted focus and resources toward the reset. That’s the window Hamilton is targeting. In his mind, 2025 was the prologue.
There’s context here. Hamilton walked into Leclerc’s team, not just Ferrari. On the Monegasque’s side of the garage, processes and people have been built layer by layer for years. Hamilton’s crew changed mid-season and is still being knitted together. Day to day, that matters — from how a setup direction is chosen on Fridays to the trust loop in the car on Sundays. The lap time difference didn’t come from one place.
None of that excuses the scoreboard, and Hamilton won’t want another year like it. But it does underpin why there’s no panic. The seven-time champion’s contract runs through 2026, and the big rules swing usually reshuffles the deck. If Ferrari nails the concept, Leclerc’s continuity makes him the benchmark. If Hamilton’s side of the garage gels, he’s still Lewis Hamilton. The paddock has made that mistake before.
His own message was simple: keep your head down.
“I’ve just been focusing on my side during this period,” he said. “It takes a bit of time.”
So where does it leave Ferrari? With an intriguing, slightly volatile mix heading into a regulation reset. Leclerc just put together a sharp, consistent season. Hamilton’s chemistry project is underway. The team has bet heavily on 2026. If the car comes out quick, it won’t take long to find out whether this year’s one-sided story was circumstance or a new normal.
Either way, don’t expect Hamilton to blink first.
