Rosberg: Hamilton’s Ferrari uptick shows how low the bar fell — and Newey’s snub stings in Maranello
Lewis Hamilton finally has some wind at his back. After a bruising first half to life in red, his weekends at Zandvoort and Monza looked tidier, tidier enough at least to stop the speculation that he might not fancy returning from the summer break. He did, and since then he’s been much closer to Charles Leclerc — not beating him everywhere, but in the fight. That’s progress.
Nico Rosberg sees it the same way, with a sting in the tail. “It was nice to see Lewis having a really solid weekend, feeling comfortable in the car, being quick at times, showing flashes of his brilliance,” he said on Sky’s The F1 Show. “But at the same time, it’s testament to how bad it was before, that just by him being close to Charles, we’re all like saying, ‘Oh, this is a great weekend’.”
Hamilton hasn’t pretended otherwise. He admitted at Monza he’s still not “100 percent comfortable with the car,” describing the need to drive it with what he called an “alien” style. In other words, he’s adapting to the Ferrari rather than the Ferrari being adapted to him — and that takes time. The raw headline is that he’s now largely on Leclerc’s pace, which is a decent place to be as Ferrari tries to steady its season.
The problem is, steady isn’t enough in Italy, and certainly not after a home race that brought P4 and P6 with no realistic shot at a podium. With eight rounds to go, Ferrari’s title chase is done for another year — a familiar refrain in the modern era. Their last Drivers’ crown remains Kimi Räikkönen’s in 2007, their last Constructors’ in 2008, a drought well documented on the 2025 standings page and one that grates more each September in Monza’s royal park. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Formula_One_World_Championship
“Ferrari will be under pressure,” Rosberg said bluntly. “They are always measured a lot by their home race, and it was a poor home race with no pace and no chance to win and no chance for a podium.”
That pressure isn’t just about lap time. It’s about people. Rosberg also tugged at a thread that’s quietly become central to Ferrari’s structural puzzle: location, location, location. The sport’s technical talent is overwhelmingly clustered in the UK. Maranello is not.
“I even heard that Ferrari may be thinking to open a department in the UK,” Rosberg offered, framing it as a response to a recruitment bottleneck. The Adrian Newey saga put all of this under a spotlight. Ferrari courted the most celebrated designer of the era, only to watch him choose Aston Martin instead — in large part, Rosberg suggested, because Newey didn’t want to uproot his life from Britain. “Many top engineering talent have the same challenge,” he added.
It’s not just a PR bruise. It’s a reminder that to win again, Ferrari may need to move more of the mountain to where the climbers already live. That doesn’t mean abandoning Maranello’s soul; it might mean augmenting it with a UK footprint that makes hiring and retaining the very best less of a life choice and more of a commute.
Because the history lesson here isn’t pretty. Ferrari went 21 years between Drivers’ titles from Jody Scheckter (1979) to Michael Schumacher (2000). This current stretch — 2007 to now — is encroaching on that timeline. For a team that lives by the sword of expectation, that’s suffocating.
Hamilton can only carry so much of that story on his shoulders. Ferrari’s job is twofold: give him a car that doesn’t demand contortions to access its speed, and sharpen team execution to the point where both drivers are regularly converting opportunities. The 2026 rules reset is the big lighthouse in the distance, but Rosberg isn’t buying the idea that it lets Ferrari shrug off the present. The best teams don’t park the now to chase the future; they do both.
The flip side for Ferrari fans? If Hamilton’s adaptation curve keeps bending the right way and Maranello nails a couple of upgrades before the flag drops on 2025, the mood music changes quickly. That’s how this sport works. Momentum is fragile. So is patience.
For now, the headline is simple. Hamilton looks more at home, which is encouraging. The reality that “being close to Leclerc” counts as a win tells you how far there still is to climb. And as Newey’s decision underlined, it’s not just about horsepower. It’s about postcode.
