Lewis Hamilton’s Baku weekend was a reminder that even the greats sometimes have to feel their way. The seven-time champion left Azerbaijan upbeat about progress at Ferrari, but he didn’t hide the lingering gap between what he wants from the car and what it’s giving him right now.
“I think there’s still some improvements to make in terms of how aggressive I can be,” Hamilton said on Sunday night. “The car has been quite snappy, so still not 100% confident under braking when I’m attacking on the brakes.”
For a driver who’s built much of his racecraft on late, decisive stops and a car that stays under him, that’s not a small admission. Baku’s layout is ruthless on that front: big stops at the end of long straights, traction zones that punish any instability, and walls ready to underline any misjudgement in permanent ink. Hamilton felt sharper a race earlier; here, a setup path that didn’t land left him short of the feeling he needed.
He and Ferrari took the blame for a ragged Saturday that put him P12 on the grid. The Sunday salvage—up to eighth by the flag—was solid enough, but not the kind of result anyone in red is interested in celebrating. “In the last race, I was [confident under braking], but in this race, didn’t feel it so much with the setup that we ended up having,” he said.
The broader theme is more nuanced. Ferrari and Hamilton are calling it progress, even if the sheets don’t show it. Results have been lean lately—no higher than sixth in the last five—and that’s the paradox he’s wrestling with. “It’s kind of crazy, because we’ve been progressing yet we’ve not had results, really in the last few races,” he said. “But there’s not like no progress so I think we’re able to do a good weekend and a good result.”
There was, of course, late-race noise that had little to do with setup sheets. Ferrari instructed Hamilton to give back position to Charles Leclerc in the closing laps, a reciprocal move after Leclerc had stepped aside earlier. Hamilton didn’t slow enough in time. He called it a misjudgement in the moment, the kind that’s easy to pick apart after the fact and harder to nail in the heat of it.
Leclerc, for his part, kept the temperature low. “I think it was very clear, but I really don’t care for an eighth place at the end,” he said. “Unfortunately, we have been very slow all weekend, and that’s where we should focus on. P8 or P9 is not something that really interests me… I mean, there are rules that we know we’ve got to work with, and today, maybe those rules were not respected. But again, P8/P9, P9/P8, that’s small.”
Team orders flare-ups tend to hang around Ferrari longer than most—nature of the jersey, nature of the spotlight. But this didn’t feel like a political spark so much as a footnote to an underwhelming weekend for both cars. The bigger picture is Ferrari trying to hand Hamilton a platform he can lean on, and Hamilton trying to push a new machine into his comfort zone, particularly on the brakes.
That part matters. Hamilton’s best days—those ominous afternoons when he controls pace, undercuts when it suits him, and carves through traffic—start with trust on corner entry. He’s not there yet. And that reality can make even small setup gambles look worse in hindsight. This time, the knife edge was too sharp.
Still, there’s a through-line in what he’s saying: the steps are happening, even if the scoreboard won’t play along. Anyone who’s watched Hamilton long enough knows he’s usually guarded in hardship and expansive when he smells a corner turned. Right now he’s somewhere in the middle—clear-eyed about the weak points, confident they’re addressable, not pretending the results are acceptable.
The next task is straightforward and difficult in equal measure: clean up Saturdays, build a car balance he can attack with on Sundays, and stop giving away the small things—because small things add up fast in this field. The braking trust will come when the rear stops biting and the fronts stop going light. When that happens, the lap time normally follows him like a shadow.
Ferrari, meanwhile, will want to park the team-order chatter and move the conversation onto pace. That’s the fastest way to make eighth or ninth irrelevant—and the only currency that matters.
