Max Verstappen: Leaving his “second family” made life harder for Hamilton at Ferrari
Max Verstappen believes the root of Lewis Hamilton’s difficult first season in red wasn’t pure pace or some sudden loss of touch — it was the aftershock of walking away from a 12-year comfort zone at Mercedes.
Hamilton’s blockbuster switch to Ferrari always carried romance and risk in equal measure. The romance never really materialised. Beyond a Chinese Grand Prix Sprint win from pole, his debut year in Maranello was a steady grind: no Grand Prix podiums, a season punctuated by terse radio with race engineer Riccardo Adami and, by year’s end, a clear deficit to Charles Leclerc.
“You leave a team that’s been your second family,” Verstappen told the Press Association. “If you don’t feel secure or comfortable within the team dynamic, you can’t be yourself — and that has an impact.”
The four-time world champion didn’t sugarcoat the scale of the jump. Hamilton arrived as the sport’s most decorated driver; Leclerc was the established reference. Verstappen’s point is simple: switching cultures and processes is one thing in preseason; doing it while chasing tenths on Sundays is another. “You’re going up against a guy who’s been there a while. It’s very tough,” he said, adding that at 40, drivers don’t suddenly find more raw speed, while Leclerc is “still getting better.”
The numbers back up the story of a year that never quite clicked. Hamilton lost qualifying head-to-head 5–19 to Leclerc and trailed 3–18 in grands prix. Both Ferraris were disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix after failing post-race checks, a flashpoint in a season where the SF-25’s details — and Hamilton’s comfort with them — too often sat just out of reach. Off-track, Hamilton even sent Ferrari a dossier of proposals on car and team changes as he looked for quicker answers.
He ended 2025 sixth in the Drivers’ standings, one spot behind Leclerc and 86 points down on his teammate. For a driver who measures seasons in trophies, that’s a lot of scar tissue.
Fred Vasseur, never one for melodrama, largely agrees with Verstappen’s premise. The Ferrari team principal admitted the sheer breadth of Hamilton’s transition was “underestimated” internally — not because Ferrari do things worse or better, but because they do almost everything differently.
“After 20 years with Mercedes — McLaren-Mercedes and then Mercedes — it was a huge change,” Vasseur said at Ferrari’s season debrief. “Every single software is different, every single component is different. The people around him were different. If you’re not on top of everything, you leave a couple of hundredths on the table.”
And in 2025, hundredths were often the difference between a front-row berth and a Q2 exit. Vasseur recalled Budapest as the cautionary tale: Leclerc a tenth quicker in Q2, Hamilton P11; Leclerc later bagged pole. That was the pattern for much of Ferrari’s year with Hamilton — the build-up just shy of complete, the outcome compromised by margins that weren’t obvious from the outside.
None of it excuses the results, and Vasseur didn’t pitch it as such. But it frames Hamilton’s season for what it was: a veteran bedding into a new ecosystem where relationships, routines and car language are learned on the fly. Ask anyone who has switched teams at the sharp end — your first enemies are time and nuance.
It’s also why Verstappen’s read feels grounded rather than snide. He’s lived the other version: Red Bull shaped around him, years of continuity, a competitive climate built for repeatability. Hamilton gave up that security to chase the Ferrari dream. This was always going to test not just his speed, but his ability to translate it in a new dialect.
So where does it go from here? The mechanics of progress are already in motion — more time with Ferrari’s tools, a winter to standardise processes, and a second season to convert those lost hundredths into clean weekends. Hamilton’s ceiling hasn’t vanished; it’s been tangled up in details. If Ferrari and Hamilton align those details, the conversation around him will change quickly.
But 2025 also reminded everyone of the cold math. Leclerc’s baseline is brutally high, and the field compresses more every year. Comfort isn’t a luxury in this era; it’s lap time. And Verstappen, of all people, knows exactly how much that’s worth.
