How Ferrari has already vindicated Hamilton’s blockbuster move

“I’m looking forward to Christmas,” Lewis Hamilton mused wistfully in the wake of this year’s Brazilian Grand Prix. Owing to his admiration of Ayrton Senna, highlighted this year by an opportunity to drive the revered Brazilian’s McLaren MP4/5B before the grand prix, races at Interlagos are usually convivial affairs for Hamilton. In fact, so much so that Hamilton was granted honorary Brazilian citizenship.

This year was anything but. The Briton endured a thankless trudge to a 10th-place finish, complaining that his Mercedes W15 was at its “worst” all weekend. And, in a season where Mercedes’ smattering of promising results have scarcely been followed by consistent performances, Christmas is on Hamilton’s mind. And, wrapped neatly in scarlet paper under the tree, there’s a 2025 Ferrari.

PLUS: Is the Hamilton/Mercedes relationship souring just before its emotional ending?

When Hamilton’s Ferrari move – and departure from Mercedes after 12 seasons – was announced on 2 February this year, the only immediate impact was levied on the driver market; a now-free Carlos Sainz had a wealth of suitors attempting to secure his services for 2025, and it ignited a flurry of driver changes over the next nine months. For Hamilton’s own decision, the pay-off would have to wait until next year. If, of course, there is a pay-off.

Hamilton’s move was huge for F1. This was not your common, garden driver transfer that barely registered outside of the championship’s own ecosystem; this was global news, and everyone and their mother wanted a slice of the action.

Example: Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou sat down to talk about his team’s activity in 2024’s winter transfer window, having signed only Radu Dragusin from Genoa and Timo Werner on loan from RB Leipzig. He began as if to reveal the details of a failed bid, before indulging in a breakneck turn towards the recent news.

“Probably the only disappointing one was yesterday [on transfer deadline day],” the pithy Australian began. “I thought there was a really good opportunity for us, but the club just didn’t feel it was the right move for us. I’m disappointed with that, but he ended up at Ferrari…”

Hamilton's move to replace Sainz at Ferrari made global headlines when it broke at the start of the year

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

That was the scale of the news outside of F1 but, inside, a handful people were questioning whether it was really such a good idea. Hamilton would be turning his back on a team with which he’d won six of his seven world titles, and a manufacturer with which he’d been linked during his entire F1 career. And, if the pre-season noises from Mercedes were to be believed, the team felt that it now had a good concept for the ground-effect floors introduced in 2022.

Ferrari, on the other hand, appeared to be a risk. This was a team that, until recently, had been synonymous with strategic gaffes and developing cars with a great appetite for Pirelli rubber. New team principal Fred Vasseur had just concluded his first year in charge at the squad and, although Sainz had interrupted Red Bull’s attempt to win every race in 2023 with his lure-and-defend tactics in Singapore, the SF-23 had proved to be an adept qualifying car that usually fell short on a Sunday.

Of course, Vasseur played an indelible part in making Hamilton’s signing happen. The two enjoyed success together across 2005 and 2006, first at Vasseur’s ASM F3 operation, then his ART team in GP2 co-owned with Nicolas Todt. Titles in both championships led to Hamilton’s F1 debut with McLaren in 2007, but that admiration for Vasseur’s continued achievements, those that equipped the mirthful Frenchman for his own future in Formula 1, never faded.

This was the point at which Hamilton could be forgiven for feeling he’d made a wrong turn. But equally, there were parallels to his decision to depart McLaren for Mercedes in 2012

There’s always an element of risk in timing an announcement before the current season has even started, let alone 2025. Although Ferrari had ended 2023 with the second-fastest car overall, there was always the chance that the competitive order could swing in the following season. Had Mercedes come out of the blocks to challenge Red Bull at the sharp end, Hamilton’s brow might have furrowed slightly at the prospect of a misstep.

The fluctuating forms of Mercedes and Ferrari

As it stands on current form, Hamilton’s decision at last appears to be vindicated. With three races left, Ferrari remains in contention for the constructors’ championship, a position it has worked itself into with a late-season flourish that returned three wins in the most recent six races. In that sextet of grands prix, Mercedes has accrued just one podium and its 2024 looks set to end with barely a whimper.

There’s been a tangible ebb and flow between both teams, neatly segmented into the following categories: Bahrain to Monaco, Canada to Belgium, and the post-summer stretch to the season’s finish line. In that first subset, Ferrari had evidently turned up with, again, the second-fastest car since McLaren had not yet embarked upon its ascendancy until its Miami upgrades arrived in early May. Mercedes, by comparison, was distinctly fourth-fastest.

But it had been given some leeway with its W15, an all-new concept that had fully turned the page from its unsuccessful ‘zeropod’ sidepod solution from 2022 and 2023. It was said that the new car’s baseline was higher than its predecessors’, but needed some time to mature into a more legitimate contender. Hamilton spoke at the end of 2023 of Mercedes now having a “North star” to follow with its W15 design, but here was the point of contention: if Mercedes was truly finding its way out of the woods, why would he leave?

Ferrari began 2024 with the second-fastest car as Mercedes initially struggled

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Ferrari took a second win of 2024 through Charles Leclerc in Monaco, but Mercedes had made a vital step forward with a new front wing design that almost paid off next time out in Canada. George Russell’s third place in Montreal could very easily have been first, had he continued his conversion of pole position, but he nonetheless felt that Mercedes had made considerable progress after the opening flurry of races. It was Hamilton’s turn on the podium at Barcelona, after pouncing on early leader Russell in the final third of the race.

This coincided with Ferrari’s mid-season slump, kicked off by its Canada misfortune in the wet and exacerbated by a new floor developed for Barcelona. This provoked bouncing in the SF-24 during high-speed corners, something that made the red cars particularly difficult to handle during moments where drivers require full commitment to make up the time.

Mercedes’ form improved significantly. Russell picked up the pieces of the Max Verstappen-Lando Norris crash in Austria to win, while Hamilton fittingly grabbed his first victory since 2021 at the British Grand Prix. He won again at Spa, albeit after Russell was disqualified for being underweight after calling his own winning one-stop strategy from his cockpit.

This was the point at which Hamilton could be forgiven for feeling he’d made a wrong turn. But equally, there were parallels to his decision to depart McLaren for Mercedes in 2012; McLaren was the more competitive of the two teams in the middle portion of the year, while Mercedes’ early promise had tailed off. Yet, McLaren’s continued mistakes proved increasingly irksome, culminating in his Singapore retirement through a gearbox quality control issue…

But Ferrari had been quietly beavering away at Maranello on understanding the root cause of its high-speed bouncing. A new floor for July’s Hungarian GP was a course-correction, although did not immediately yield an overwhelming swing in fortunes. Post-summer, Ferrari was surprised by its own race performance at Zandvoort, but rode the wave at Monza with another step in its underbody design.

And here was the real clincher for Ferrari; it had not only given its SF-24 more ammunition to work with, but the team also shrugged off its reputation for strategic misfires by pouncing on the opportunity to one-stop. It led to Leclerc taking victory in front of the tifosi, and he very nearly doubled up in Baku, only to encounter a terrific defence from eventual winner Oscar Piastri.

Singapore would have been better without Sainz’s qualifying crash and Leclerc’s deleted lap time, but Ferrari at least recouped positions in the city-state race, while Mercedes could not quite rekindle its qualifying form in Sunday’s night-time affair.

But Ferrari was awaiting its true test of how its upgraded aerodynamics would perform at a more ‘conventional’ circuit; Monza, Baku and Singapore have their own peculiarities that masked the efficacy of that new floor. Austin delivered that litmus test. Despite struggling with the sector one bumps at the Circuit of The Americas in qualifying trim, Ferrari rocketed to a commanding 1-2 finish in Texas. Sainz then dominated in Mexico, further demonstrating those improvements.

Back-to-back victories at COTA and Mexico underlined Ferrari's progress in recovering from its mid-season slump

Photo by: Ferrari

As Ferrari waxed, Mercedes waned. Russell managed third in Baku, albeit through attritional means once more after Sainz and Sergio Perez crashed in the dying stages of the race. But the younger Briton has nonetheless outperformed Hamilton across the races since the summer break, and has now climbed ahead of his elder team-mate in the drivers’ championship by two points. Had the Spa disqualification not come to pass, Russell would have managed that feat sooner.

There’s an old adage in sport: form is temporary, class is permanent – even if Hamilton is no longer at the peak of his powers. But it does beg the following question: Hamilton’s decision to move to Ferrari may have been vindicated, but is Ferrari vindicated in signing him?

Can Hamilton reverse his current slump?

Taking Hamilton’s current issues at face value, there’s a clear imbalance in the Mercedes W15 that has become of increasing irritation to Hamilton. When a car is balanced, a driver can place it into corners as they please, safe in the knowledge that the rear end will comply and deliver the requisite traction to exit a turn quickly.

The psychological effects of the mid-season promise and subsequent drop-off appear to have taken their toll, leading to further mistakes

Watching Hamilton of late, and supported by his radio messages, that car/driver simpatico is conspicuously absent. It’s not exactly present for Russell either, but it seems to be hurting the seven-time champion more.

Russell has been able to contend with a tricky and unpredictable car a little better; perhaps there’s still a bit of muscle memory of pedalling uncompetitive Williams machinery in Russell’s game.

Hamilton, for his part, has had moments with troublesome cars before – but never for such an extended period. The psychological effects of the mid-season promise and subsequent drop-off appear to have taken their toll, leading to further mistakes – for example, that second-lap off at Austin – that have been largely uncharacteristic of his 17 years in F1.

This is partly due to Mercedes’ capriciousness with the interaction between tyres and downforce. Speaking about his Austin crash, Hamilton explained that “there’s a small window where the downforce is perfect, and it gets too high then you fall off the peak, and the other side, you go over the peak”, and this was worsened by Mercedes’ own struggles with bouncing in the car.

Hamilton's early exit from the US Grand Prix was a gaffe that has rarely been seen from the seven-time champion in his lengthy F1 tenure

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Because of the high spring rates required to operate the current F1 cars to maintain a consistent window for the floors to work, the cars are prone to coupling effects between the sprung (the chassis and, by extension, the aerodynamics) and the unsprung (tyres and uprights) masses. At certain wind speed frequencies, the car begins to excite its pitch and heave modes, thus inducing bouncing.

This puts inconsistent loads through the tyre, a quality that Hamilton disliked greatly in Mercedes’ 2022 W13 chassis. The W14, and early-season W15, appeared to iron those issues out – but they’re back, and with a vengeance.

That’s let defeatism creep into Hamilton’s attitude. After Monza, he stated that “qualifying has been my weakness for a minute now and I can’t figure it out”, and this has led to a string of below-par performances in recent events. After Brazil, in which a Q1 exit was followed by a difficult race, Hamilton effectively stated that he was no longer worried about performing over the rest of the year.

“I just put my focus on something else. I’m not fighting for the championship. Doesn’t matter, really, where we finish in the championship,” he said, knowing that Mercedes was certain of fourth in the constructors’ standings.

“I don’t care if I finish ahead of George or behind George. It doesn’t make a difference to me. I just want to keep the car out of the wall and try to score points if I can for the team, if I can finish, whatever. If they give me a car that doesn’t bounce off the track in the next few races, then hopefully we can get a better result.”

But it’s reversible. A fresh environment will give Hamilton energy, particularly as he fulfils his dream of racing in red for the final chapter of his F1 career. Ferrari has also battled with bouncing this year and, crucially, appears to have succeeded in that challenge. And, at Maranello, the team is fully focused on making its union with Hamilton a success – and it has given its 2025 chassis plenty of attention to make that happen.

How will 2025 go for Ferrari and Hamilton?

Speaking in October about Hamilton’s move to the team, Vasseur explained that the driver’s decision to move to Ferrari was very much a seal of approval that the team could start challenging for honours on a more consistent basis.

“He always had this desire in mind, but of course he is a driver who wants to have guarantees in terms of performance, for him this aspect is always in the first place,” Vasseur remarked. “If he chose to join Ferrari, it confirms to me that we can have the right car. This is the ultimate goal.

Hamilton was downbeat in Brazil, but will Ferrari move revive his fortunes?

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

“A driver like Lewis does not come to us on vacation and from my side I think we are in the right place in terms of performance. We need a step forward and I can say that we are devoting a lot of resources to our next project.”

It entirely depends on how Ferrari can continue its current sequence of performances and transfer that beyond the winter. Teams are finding diminishing returns with the current ruleset, and tentative predictions of greater convergence next year are being made by those in the know; so 2025 will be the culmination of everybody’s efforts over the past three seasons.

Ferrari has already installed former Mercedes engineer Loic Serra as technical director to replace the Aston Martin-bound Enrico Cardile, which it hopes will ensure that the team continues to grow in Vasseur’s image. The trackside operation is looking increasingly ship-shape by the race and, while the technical side at Maranello has been largely unchanged, Vasseur has tinkered with the hierarchy in the hope that he finds the magic formula.

There’s a strong chance that he’ll like the Ferrari. The current lineage of cars have all enjoyed a similar trait of compliant behaviour over kerbs and bumps

Even with a competitive car, there will be subtleties that Hamilton will need to get his head around. Exclusive experience of Mercedes’ power delivery might prompt a slight mental retune to how he applies the throttle, as will Ferrari’s internal systems and procedures in the car.

But there’s a strong chance that he’ll like the Ferrari. The current lineage of cars have all enjoyed a similar trait of compliant behaviour over kerbs and bumps, which will allow him to benefit from a responsive front end and consistent feeling from the rear under traction.

But it’s also a car that allows itself to be hustled; Leclerc loves to wring the neck of a car in qualifying and, although he occasionally surpasses the limit of the car on a hot lap, the bar that makes the Ferrari more irascible appears to be much higher than the current Mercedes.

It’s unlikely that Hamilton will get a chance in the post-season test to try the SF-24, and he’ll probably have to wait until testing in 2025 to deliver his verdict on Ferrari’s efforts so far.

And what chance an eighth title? Both parties would dearly love to make it so – but if next year is as competitive as we expect it to be, it’s going to be a hugely challenging task to work those wonders immediately. And yet, stranger things have happened.

How Hamilton’s arrival will benefit Leclerc

Leclerc is looking forward to taking on Hamilton - and hopes it will allow him to reach another level in his own performances

Photo by: John Toscano / Motorsport Images

When Charles Leclerc was promoted to Ferrari after just one season in Formula 1 with Sauber, it did away with the Prancing Horse’s perceived conservatism in the driver market. Here was a team that had declined to replace Felipe Massa with an up-and-comer, and instead reinstated Kimi Raikkonen to the line-up. And, although the Finn was past his best, he stayed for five seasons.

Leclerc’s arrival shook things up at Maranello. The Monegasque very quickly put Sebastian Vettel in the shade and became top dog, and Vettel was replaced for 2021 by Carlos Sainz. And Sainz has, throughout his four years alongside Leclerc, largely kept up with his team-mate.

But there’s a small glimmer of star quality that separates the two drivers; Leclerc might be the more peaky of the two versus Sainz’s impressive consistency, but the eight-time grand prix winner is the one more predisposed to the moments that make an athlete special.

So, if Leclerc felt that he was Ferrari’s go-to man, surely he’d be aggrieved at Hamilton coming in to capture some of the limelight – right? Not so.

“When you have a seven-time world champion joining the team, it’s always good news,” Leclerc remarked. “I can learn from one of the best-ever Formula 1 drivers, and I’m super-motivated to show what I’m capable of doing against Lewis in the same car.”

And that’s exactly the right attitude. Leclerc might be the best one-lap specialist on the F1 grid, but there are still a few rough edges to his repertoire in a race. Hamilton, who perhaps these days is a better racer than qualifier, can help to knock those rough edges into shape.

Can Hamilton help Leclerc to smooth his rough edges in race trim?

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Truth be told, Leclerc doesn’t need much tutoring. His old reputation as a mercurial talent, one who was blessed with considerable speed but a penchant for hurling his car into walls, has largely dwindled. But there’s still a smidgen of inconsistency.

Take his recent races for example. He was excellent at Zandvoort, Monza and Baku, and then had an iffy Singapore race. He starred at Austin, and then paled versus Sainz in Mexico. It might just be the ebb and flow of close-run team-mates, but Leclerc can do no harm by elevating himself to a more consistent level.

And, although recent form has deserted Hamilton, his string of championship wins nonetheless show that he’s capable of title-worthy runs of consistent high notes. Unlocking that, while also teaching him the special sauce recipe of maximising results on off-days, will be a significant boon to both Leclerc and Ferrari long-term.

Hamilton won’t be there forever: two years, perhaps three at a push. Leclerc has signed his long-term future up to Ferrari and, if he can beat Hamilton over their time as team-mates, he’ll truly have completed the final boss before a championship tilt. It’s just up to Ferrari to deliver a car capable of more than occasional victories…

Achieving more than irregular victories has to be the aim for Ferrari and Leclerc moving forward

Photo by: Ferrari