Lewis Hamilton doesn’t do nostalgia by halves, but his latest Maranello photo drop felt pointed rather than sentimental. With Ferrari’s 2026 campaign looming and a bruising first year in red still fresh, the seven-time world champion chose the most loaded possible prop: Michael Schumacher’s F2004, half-hidden under a cover, Hamilton lifting it just enough to let the nose and front wing breathe.
It’s easy to read that as a simple fan moment — Hamilton has always been a student of the sport’s history — yet the timing gives it an edge. Ferrari has already given Hamilton and Charles Leclerc their first taste of the SF-26, and the paddock is rolling toward the second pre-season test in Bahrain. This is the moment drivers tend to project certainty, even if they’re still privately searching for it.
Hamilton’s 2025 season didn’t offer much of that. For the first time in his career he went through a full year without a podium, and he finished the season 86 points behind Leclerc. Those numbers matter inside a team like Ferrari, where the spotlight isn’t just bright — it’s forensic. If you’re Hamilton, you don’t need to tell anyone you’re hurting; the results already did that. So you communicate differently.
Standing over the F2004 is one way of doing it. Schumacher’s most dominant Ferrari, the one that won 15 of 18 races in 2004, is a symbol of what “right” looks like at Maranello: ruthless execution, clarity of direction, a car and driver in lockstep. Hamilton lifting the cover isn’t just a peek at a museum piece. It’s a reminder — to himself, to the factory, to everyone watching — of the standard Ferrari people still measure themselves against, even when the regulations and the sport have moved on.
There was another photo in the set, too: Hamilton and Leclerc together, shoulder-to-shoulder in a selfie. In isolation it’s nothing; in context it reads like a small piece of internal politics done smartly. Ferrari doesn’t need more tension heading into a new era. Leclerc is heading into his eighth full season with the team, deeply embedded, and last year he comfortably had Hamilton covered. Hamilton can’t change that with a caption, but he can signal alignment — a public nod that whatever 2025 was, 2026 has to be more coherent.
The Schumacher theme isn’t confined to Hamilton’s camera roll, either. Lego has confirmed it will release a 2004-spec Schumacher Ferrari model in 2026, complete with a figurine, trophy, helmet, and a podium display bearing one of Schumacher’s quotes: “I’ve always believed that you should never, ever give up and you should always keep fighting even when there’s only a slightest chance.”
You don’t have to be particularly cynical to see why that line is being shared so eagerly around a team trying to claw its way back to the front. It also dovetails neatly with Hamilton’s own situation: a champion confronting an unfamiliar phase of his career, asked to reboot in a new environment after a year where nothing clicked often enough.
The Lego announcement landed with added poignancy because Mick Schumacher narrated the reveal via an animated clip. Mick, who made 43 grand prix starts across 2021 and 2022, spoke about his earliest memories of his father winning in a Ferrari, and described the F2004 in technical, almost tactile terms: the V10 engine, the rear suspension, the refined aerodynamics — “a beast”, as he put it — and the rare synergy when a driver can “become one with the car”. Mick also recalled driving the F2004 himself in a demonstration run at Mugello in 2020, a moment that briefly collapsed Ferrari’s past and present into a single noise-filled afternoon.
All of that sits in the background of Hamilton’s Maranello moment: the weight of Ferrari myth, the gravity of Schumacher’s legacy, and the fact Schumacher hasn’t been seen in public since suffering severe head injuries in a skiing accident in December 2013.
But Hamilton’s visit wasn’t a history lesson. It was a piece of messaging, whether consciously crafted or instinctive. Ferrari is heading into 2026 trying to rediscover its winning habits, and Hamilton is trying to reassert himself inside a team where he’s no longer the undisputed reference point. When you’ve just lived through the first podium-less season of your career, you don’t post a peek at the F2004 because you’re bored.
You do it because you’re telling the world — and maybe your own doubts — that you still know what greatness looks like, and you’re not done chasing it.
