Vasseur's "amazing" first rodeo with a young Hamilton before F1 2025 reunion

Out of a once-successful but now-broken partnership with a storied squad, and into the welcoming, generally jolly arms of Fred Vasseur at the helm of another. Lewis Hamilton has been here before. 

Rewind 20 years, and Ferrari’s new Formula 1 superstar was merely a highly rated up-and-comer, with considerable McLaren backing. It was still early days in his single-seater career. Hamilton had won the Formula Renault UK title at the second attempt with Manor Motorsport in 2003. Manor then opted to switch its successful Formula 3 team out of the British championship and into the F3 Euro Series, to which it graduated with its young prodigy. 

But things hadn’t panned out the way either party wanted. Hamilton scored only one win and finished a distant fifth in the standings, feeling that the team blamed him for its poor return. Manor, meanwhile, was undone by the unfamiliar Kumho tyres, having been used to the Avons run in British F3. Pre-season set-up work yielded a balance sweet spot that would only work in cold temperatures, and a limit on testing had helped neither side. 

There followed two partings – one permanent, the other less so. For while he was finishing his time with Manor – around two wildly contrasting events in the 2004 Macau Grand Prix and Bahrain Superprix – Hamilton had also been cut loose by McLaren. His Bahrain grid position had been so lowly that his devastated father Anthony – at the time still managing his son’s career – had flown home to continue the search for a new benefactor. But somehow Hamilton, having crashed from pole in Macau, pulled off a famous comeback to win in Bahrain. And with McLaren still paying attention behind the scenes, their famous relationship was rekindled. 

Together, they planned their next step for 2005, ultimately landing on the crack ASM team that had just taken Jamie Green to a dominant 2004 Euro F3 title. Emulating this had always been McLaren’s aim, its COO Martin Whitmarsh closely steering Hamilton’s career progression – its driver’s initial desire to step directly to the GP2 championship, which was replacing the dwindling Formula 3000 series for 2005, was behind their brief separation. 

ASM was the starting point for Vasseur’s motorsport empire, which would morph into ART Grand Prix and supply the chassis used in Formula E and Extreme E/H via the Spark Racing Technology business he founded. 

“I’ve got a great relationship with Fred,” Hamilton said shortly after his intention to switch from Mercedes was first announced. “We had amazing success in F3 and also in GP2 [in 2006] – that’s really where the foundation of our relationship started. And we just always remained in touch. I thought that he was going to be an amazing team manager at some stage and progress to F1, but at the time he wasn’t interested in that. The stars aligned. I think [joining Ferrari] really wouldn’t have happened without him.” 

Vasseur was Hamilton's team boss when he won the Formula 3 and GP2 titles before the Briton's F1 debut in 2007

At the recent Abu Dhabi F1 finale, Vasseur said he can “perfectly remember” the early days of his relationship with Hamilton. “That he was already like this,” he added, “pushing on the small details.”  

But back in the winter of 2004-05, it was ASM and Vasseur pointing out such specifics to their new charge. That’s according to Guillaume Capietto, then ASM’s lead F3 engineer and today technical director for ASM’s big single-seater rival, Prema Racing. 

“He was for sure a super-talented guy,” recalls the Frenchman, who actually raced karts at the same time as Hamilton before joining ASM as an intern in 1999. “A bit brute in terms of driving skills at the beginning. Like, not braking super-well, not having a lot of technique in place, not taking marks for braking for lines, etc. He was doing a lot of things on feeling. We had a period during the winter where we worked a lot on this.” 

“When he was with us in F3, he was speaking about F1 – but like a dream and without a plan. But when he went to GP2, he was starting to really push for F1" Guillaume Capietto

McLaren wanted Hamilton to utterly dominate the 2005 F3 Euro Series. Capietto reckons ASM’s pedigree and being a “more organised team than some others in this period” helped provide the missing consistency from Hamilton’s first attempt. The new partnership had other potent edges. The Mercedes engines that powered the ASM cars and those of two other teams (including Manor) in 2005 were a clear cut above the disappointing Opel powerplants fielded by the main opposition. ASM’s set-up work was also devastatingly effective – although our review of the 2005 campaign noted “rivals claimed the cars spent a day a week in the wind tunnel… ASM pointed to good driver feedback and excellent set-up work”. 

The results were outstanding. Hamilton clinched the title with four races to spare, claiming 15 wins from 20 (that would have been 16 if not for a Spa exclusion due to irregular diffuser measurements, thought to be the result of kerb use or compression damage from Eau Rouge). But Hamilton’s racecraft – on display in scintillating scraps with future F1 rival Sebastian Vettel – and tyre management mastery stood out even then. These are two honed and enduring elements of his class that he now brings to Ferrari. 

“During the year, he didn’t really change,” reckons Capietto. “He was focused on winning races. Even after the title was secured he was still very determined. When he was not winning or not doing a pole position, he was not happy.” 

Engineer Capietto (left) was key to Hamilton's junior career success

Capietto remembers how during Vasseur’s time directly running his single-seater operation, he was “quite close with the drivers – and following their careers and helping a bit”. For Hamilton this extended to dealing with McLaren boss Ron Dennis and his key lieutenant Whitmarsh. “So, that was quite a close group [around] Lewis,” Capietto adds. 

And it stayed together into 2006, when Hamilton stepped up to GP2, still with ART. Capietto would also continue his heavy involvement in the future F1 superstar’s fortunes, taking charge of the team’s engineering corps on the Dallara GP2/05 machines when his fellow chief engineer Steeve Marcel (the plan had been for Capietto to stay in charge of F3 engineering) required sadly unsuccessful treatment for cancer. 

Now in a fully-spec category – albeit one ART had won with Hamilton’s then friend Nico Rosberg the year before – results were much harder to come by in a series F1 team bosses watched closely. 

Hamilton didn’t take a first GP2 win until the fifth race of 2006, the Nurburgring feature event. He was learning half of the tracks on the calendar, while also displaying a start problem that has at times dogged him at the highest level too. When he unleashed five wins in seven races from the mid-season, there was speculation from rival squads that ART had something trick. When this streak stopped abruptly amid intense interest in a controversial damper arrangement, for which no conclusive proof of use ever emerged, a backfiring experiment on tyre pressure adjustment was thought to be the more likely cause. 

At the same time, Hamilton was dealing with new and unrelenting pressure of a different kind: the possibility of promotion to F1. Dennis and Whitmarsh had told him that winning the GP2 title as a rookie was required to be in consideration to partner Fernando Alonso in McLaren F1 machinery for 2007 and, when Hamilton sat commandingly atop the standings following two popular home wins at Silverstone, his dream move was finally really on. 

“When he was with us in F3, he was speaking about F1 – but like a dream and without a plan,” explains Capietto. “But when he went to GP2, he was starting to really push for F1. There was an F1 option that started to be more than open, let’s say. And that put a lot of pressure on him. There was this tension that changed a bit how he approached the races.” 

McLaren identified a young Hamilton as its future F1 star and the partnership eventually yielded the 2008 world drivers' championship

Vasseur and the McLaren overlords tried to help – “there was a lot of discussion between Fred and Lewis,” Capietto recalls – but in the end he had to work it out for himself. Vasseur reckoned Hamilton’s stunning moves at Maggotts on GP2 title rival Nelson Piquet Jr “killed Piquet that day” at Silverstone. But really, given it came amid his late-season struggles, Hamilton’s sensational recovery to finish second from an early spin in the Istanbul Park sprint race was the knockout blow. “He took over,” concludes Capietto, “and did two good final races [in the Monza finale] where at the end the pressure was at the maximum.” 

The rest to this point is now Hamilton history but, given his Vasseur alliance is reigniting, many hope more will follow. Yet this time around, after 356 F1 starts, 105 wins and 104 poles, the experience tables have turned. As Vasseur himself acknowledges, in 2025 it’s Hamilton who can really inspire Ferrari.

“It’s always important to have people coming from other teams with a different culture,” he said on Hamilton’s last day racing for Mercedes, which had begun with his provocative entrance to the Abu Dhabi paddock in his new team’s colours. “I am convinced that Lewis will come with his own experience, with the background of 18 years in F1, with a couple of titles. And it will be a real push to keep this mindset – to be a bit better everywhere.”   

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Will the Hamilton-Vasseur partnership claim more titles, 19 years after their last together?