Villeneuve spots a reset in Hamilton: “He’s changed his mindset, and it’s affecting his driving”
Lewis Hamilton walked out of Zandvoort qualifying sounding like a different driver to the one who left Budapest bruised and biting. And Jacques Villeneuve thinks that shift between the ears might be the story of Ferrari’s summer.
Two races, two very different Hamiltons. In Hungary, the seven-time champion tore into himself — “useless,” he called his own performance — and hinted Ferrari might be better off changing the “faulty driver.” In the Netherlands, after qualifying seventh in a car that still isn’t where he wants it, Hamilton was upbeat and, crucially, relaxed.
“I tried to have a slightly different approach into the weekend,” he said, keeping the details to himself. “I’ve made some tweaks before I even got here, and then through the weekend, and it’s been a lot smoother.”
That tonal change jumped off the screen for Villeneuve. The 1997 World Champion has long maintained that the worst thing a driver can do is overreach when the machinery isn’t there.
“You know what can make a difference? Accepting that the car is not quick enough, and then you stop overdriving it,” Villeneuve said after qualifying. “You stop trying to figure out a setup that will get you pole when the car can’t get pole, and then you end up going a bit faster because of that.”
Hamilton’s Zandvoort put him “on par with his teammate,” Villeneuve noted — a simpler weekend, no drama, no spiral. “He’s had a good weekend. It’s up here. He’s changed his mindset, and it’s affecting his driving.”
It was hard to miss the contrast across the Ferrari garage. Charles Leclerc, who put the SF-25 sixth, was spiky and self-critical — calling Friday his “worst” of the season and admitting he was “very disappointed” with his own qualifying lap. Villeneuve’s macro point, though, was that Ferrari weren’t miles off. “With a tenth or two they could have been P4,” he reckoned. In other words: perspective matters.
Naomi Schiff put a finer point on it: mindset alone doesn’t shave tenths. “What I would be really interested to understand is, when Lewis is saying he’s changed his approach, what does that mean?” she asked. “Because ultimately his issue was that he wasn’t getting along with the way the car was handling. So I wonder what’s changed, besides just the mindset, to make him feel that comfortable — especially on a circuit like this.”
Villeneuve countered with a history lesson. Think Red Bull in 2014, Daniel Ricciardo arriving like a thunderbolt while Sebastian Vettel twisted himself into knots. “Vettel was trying to invent a car to go win, and he couldn’t,” Villeneuve said. “So he was going backwards with the stress.” The comparison isn’t one-to-one, but the warning is timeless: stop fighting the car you want and drive the one you’ve got.
For Hamilton, now in scarlet for 2025 alongside Leclerc, the Zandvoort message wasn’t about a breakthrough upgrade or a magic setup window. It was about breathing room. About rolling into an FP1 and not chasing a lap time the car can’t give. About letting the SF-25 come to him.
That’s not to say Ferrari’s ceiling is suddenly high enough to bother the polesitters every weekend; it isn’t. But there’s a meaningful distinction between squeezing everything out of a tricky car and trying to will it into something it’s not. The former wins you Sundays you have no business winning. The latter drains the tank.
Hamilton hinted during the summer shutdown that he’d “keep going even when it’s difficult.” At Zandvoort, you could hear what that looks like. A lighter touch on the radio. A driver working with his tools, not raging against them. And a team that, for one afternoon at least, seemed to exhale with him.
Whether it sticks is the next chapter. The calendar doesn’t get easier, and Ferrari still face a development race they can’t afford to lose. But if you were looking for a sign that Hamilton’s move to Maranello can click beyond the soundbites, Zandvoort offered one: same car, different energy. Sometimes, that’s where the lap time starts.
