Arrivabene’s blunt verdict on Hamilton’s ‘dossiers’: When drivers play engineer, it’s over
Lewis Hamilton arrived at Ferrari promising to help shape the Scuderia, not just drive for it. Twelve months on, Maurizio Arrivabene thinks the line’s been crossed.
The former Ferrari team principal, who ran the outfit from 2015 to 2018, has taken a dim view of Hamilton’s flurry of internal “documents” — detailed notes with proposals on car direction, communications and race-weekend execution — that the Briton admitted sending throughout a bruising 2025. Arrivabene’s assessment is hardly subtle: once a driver starts behaving like an engineer, the relationship is “over.”
“Sebastian Vettel also sent such dossiers,” Arrivabene told Sky Italy. “He wrote, spoke and shared everything. Almost useless. I don’t want to say anything bad about Sebastian, but everyone should mind their own business. When a driver starts playing engineer, that’s it. Then it’s really over.”
Hamilton laid out his approach back in July, explaining that he’d submitted an initial report after the opening flyaways, two more during the break between Silverstone and Spa, and another following Singapore. Whether more followed in the autumn is unclear. What wasn’t is why he did it: Hamilton spoke repeatedly about refusing to become another multiple champion who couldn’t make it happen at Maranello.
But 2025 was a grind. Hamilton went through his first season without a podium in Formula 1 and, up against Charles Leclerc, was consistently on the back foot. The gap between them in the points told its own story by year’s end.
Arrivabene’s skepticism comes from experience. He’d publicly reined Vettel in during Ferrari’s barren 2016 run, warning the four-time champion to focus on the job behind the wheel. “Drivers spend two or three days in the simulator and get a general impression,” he said now. “But the devil is in the details. When the car is on the track, the driver must provide relevant feedback so engineers can make targeted improvements — especially when there is potential.”
The message has been echoed higher up the chain. After a chaotic Brazil weekend, Ferrari president John Elkann urged both Hamilton and Leclerc to “focus on driving” and “talk less.” Not the standard Maranello press line, but then this hasn’t been a standard transition.
The irony here is unavoidable. Hamilton is understood to have leaned on Vettel for guidance before he even pulled on red overalls, particularly once it was confirmed Riccardo Adami — formerly Vettel and Carlos Sainz’s race engineer — would be the voice in his ear. During testing, Hamilton was spotted jotting down notes in the garage, a Vettel hallmark. None of that is unusual; great drivers are meticulous. The tactical question is whether Ferrari benefits from its star driver trying to steer the ship between sessions, or whether it muddies the waters for a group that’s spent years trying to simplify how it operates.
Vettel himself, speaking on F1’s Beyond the Grid, walked the line between empathy and realism. “A lot of things need to come together,” he said of Hamilton’s Ferrari project. “The longer it takes, the harder it becomes. He has a fair shot from his performance, but you need the team, the people, the timing to be on the sweet spot. It would be great — and I think he deserves it if it comes together — but we will find out.”
That’s the uncomfortable truth hanging over Maranello now. Hamilton didn’t walk in expecting miracles. He did expect traction — a clear route to improvement and a car he could mould. Ferrari, for their part, hired a serial winner with a forensic touch; they can’t be surprised he’s rolled up his sleeves. Yet the institution has always bristled when its drivers appear to step over the white line from influence into interference.
So which side blinks? Do Ferrari’s leaders close ranks and tell Hamilton to keep the feedback flowing but stop with the dossiers, or do they sift through his winter memos and pivot harder in his direction? Maybe both. The team knows Leclerc is the benchmark in the garage right now; it also knows the value of a seven-time champion when the window opens.
Arrivabene’s warning may ring loudly in Italy, but it isn’t the last word. Hamilton has built a career on course-correcting mid-project. The clock, though, is no friend in Maranello. Ferrari’s patience and Hamilton’s persistence will either collide or coalesce — and that will decide whether these documents become the footnote to a turnaround, or the receipts from a year that went nowhere.
