Lewis Hamilton has won seven Formula 1 Drivers’ Championships.
If he is to win an eighth, it will come at Ferrari, the team he moved to for the 2025 F1 season following a tremendous run of success. But he would also have to avoid something that befell other legends of the sport, namely Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel, who failed to win titles after moving to one of the most famous brands in sport.
That is something that Hamilton refuses to accept.
Speaking with the media ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix, Hamilton opened up on the steps he is taking to make sure he can win another title at Ferrari.
“I see a huge amount of potential within this team,” said Hamilton during the FIA Press Conference on Thursday. “The passion: nothing comes close to that.
“But it’s a huge organisation, and there are a lot of moving parts. And not all of them are firing on all the cylinders that they need to be. That’s ultimately why the team has not had the success that I think it deserves.
“So I feel that it’s my job to challenge absolutely every area, to challenge everybody in the team. Particularly the guys [who] are at the top who are making the decisions.
“If you look at the team over the last 20 years, they’ve had amazing drivers: Fernando [Alonso], Sebastian [Vettel] – all world champions. However, they didn’t win a world championship [at Ferrari].
“And for me, I refuse for that to be the case with me.”
To that end, Hamilton has been providing the entire team with reports on areas where they can improve, including on the marketing side of things.
“I’m going the extra mile,” he added during the FIA Press Conference.
“I’ve been very fortunate to have had experiences in two other great teams. While things are different because there’s a different culture and everything, I think if you take the same path all the time, you get the same results. So I’m just challenging certain things.
“We’ve been improving in so many areas – through marketing, through everything we are delivering for sponsors, the way the engineers continue to work. There’s still a lot of improvements to be made, but they’ve been very responsive.
“Ultimately, I’m just trying to create allies within the organisation and get them ‘geed up’, get them pushing. I’m here to win. I don’t have as much time as [18-year-old Kimi Antonelli, who was also in the FIA Press Conference] so it’s crunch time.
“I truly believe in the potential of this team. I really believe they can win multiple world championships moving forward. They already have an amazing legacy. But during my time, that’s my sole goal.”
Hamilton then elaborated on how this process has played out at Ferrari.
“I was at the factory [over the past] two weeks, a couple of days each week,” said Hamilton. “We did preparation, naturally going over where we were in the previous race, things that we need to change.
“I hold a lot of meetings, so I’ve called lots of meetings with the heads of the team, so I’ve sat with John [Elkann, president], Benedetto [Vigna, CEO], and Fred [Vasseur, team principal] in several meetings. I’ve sat with the head of our car development, with Loic [Serra, technical director for chassis], also the heads of different departments.
“We’re talking about the engine for next year, talking about front suspension for next year, talking about rear suspension for next year; things that you want, issues that I have with this car.
“I’ve sent documents [throughout] the year. After the first few races I did a full document for the team, then during this break I had another two documents that I sent in, and so then I come in and want to address those.
“Some of it is structural adjustments that we need to make as a team in order to get better in all the areas that we want to improve. The other one was really about the car, the current issues that I have with this car. Some things you do want to take onto the next year’s car and some that you need to work on changing for next year.”
Ferrari is rolling out another substantial upgrade for this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, a new rear suspension. This follows a new floor for the SF-25 that the team unveiled at the Austrian Grand Prix.
Hamilton finished fourth at both the Austrian Grand Prix and the British Grand Prix the following week, with the upgraded floor.
While Ferrari had Hamilton and Charles Leclerc put the new rear suspension through its paces at a filming day, the team will get more of a feel for the upgrade during Friday’s single hour of practice ahead of qualifying for the F1 Sprint race.
Also in the FIA Press Conference, Hamilton noted that the car felt the “same” during the filming session, but more “learnings” will follow.
“The same as before,” said Hamilton when asked about the rear suspension.
“No. Firstly we’ll get to test the suspension tomorrow, and I’m sure there’s going to be learnings from it,” added Hamilton.
“We’ll kind of figure out how to finetune it and to try to extract performance from it. On the simulator there’s no difference, but I’m sure across different circuits perhaps there’ll be benefits. I think for me the positive thing is arriving at the filming day where you see that new bits are coming, you see that we are getting development.”
The seven-time champion also noted that he was “grateful” to see upgrades coming to the SF-25.
“I think I was just really happy to see that there clearly is a big pushback at the factory, there are a lot of changes, and then to see the results with those changes takes time, so I was just really grateful to see we’ve got new parts. We’ll try and put them to use this weekend,” added Hamilton.
Perhaps those reports of his are having an impact.
