Lewis Hamilton says the roar around Ferrari has dulled the joy — and he wants it back
Lewis Hamilton cut a reflective figure arriving at Zandvoort, admitting the glare and grind of his first season in red has sapped the fun out of Formula 1. With 10 races left, the seven-time World Champion says it’s time to strip things back and remember why he does this.
“I’m determined to reset,” Hamilton said ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix. “There’s been a lot of pressure, a lot of noise. We need to keep our heads down, tweak a few things in how we work, and actually enjoy ourselves again. That’s why we’re here.”
It’s been a bruising opening chapter to Hamilton’s Ferrari move. The winter switch from Mercedes came with enormous expectation; the reality has been starker. Across his first 14 starts for the Scuderia, the podium remains out of reach. The nadir arrived in Budapest, where Hamilton languished 12th on the grid while Charles Leclerc delivered Ferrari’s first pole of the year. Afterward, Hamilton was brutally self-critical — calling himself “useless” in the heat of the moment and even quipping the team should consider replacing him.
He later cooled the rhetoric and, crucially, shut down talk of walking away from Ferrari or the sport. “You keep going when it’s hard,” he said earlier this week, a reminder that the competitor in him is still very much intact.
At the heart of it is the adjustment to Ferrari’s scale and spotlight. Hamilton spoke of the sheer volume of commitments that have come with the switch — partners, shoots, the churn of a new environment — and the weight of joining the most scrutinised team in the paddock.
“It’s a massive organisation, the biggest brand in our sport,” he said. “A lot to take on all at once. I’ve dreamed of racing for Ferrari since I was a kid — there’s been so much around it that we haven’t really been able to enjoy it. That has to change.”
That reframe matters. Hamilton doesn’t sound defeated; he sounds like a driver trying to simplify under strain. He wants the garage quieter, the execution cleaner, the mindset lighter. Whether it moves the needle competitively is another debate, but anyone who’s watched him long enough knows that a calm, purposeful Hamilton is the most dangerous version.
Inside the Ferrari camp, the benchmark is unavoidably Leclerc. The Monegasque has shouldered the team’s qualifying peaks and sits ahead in the standings, and Zandvoort gives Ferrari an immediate read on whether Hamilton’s reset can close the gap. The orange banking doesn’t forgive indecision or instability, but it can reward precision — which is exactly what Hamilton’s chasing.
If the outside noise has been loud, a familiar voice cut through it this week. George Russell, Hamilton’s Mercedes team-mate from 2022–24, dismissed the “useless” line as emotion after a bad day and pointed to the Shanghai sprint as proof the old touch is still there. Hamilton controlled that Saturday from pole to flag, a reminder that he hasn’t forgotten how to lead — he just needs a car and a weekend to meet him halfway.
This is the paradox of Ferrari’s 2025: the car’s flashes of speed have been real, but the windows are narrow and the margins small. Miss them, and you’re exposed. Hamilton has absorbed more of that sting than he’d care to, and his hints about “things going on in the background” at Maranello suggest the internal calibration isn’t complete either.
But the ask from Hamilton now is simple: shut out the echo chamber and lean into the craft. He’s been through reinventions before — new regulations, slumps, title fights that slipped away and came roaring back. The Zandvoort reset isn’t a grand promise; it’s a driver trying to get comfortable in his own skin inside the most uncomfortable seat in motorsport.
And if he can find that spark? The season’s final act still has room for a twist. Ferrari hired Lewis Hamilton for exactly those — the weekends where the pressure turns to poise and the noise becomes applause.
