Don’t stop believing: Lewis Hamilton is still holding on to that winning feeling

Pinpointing the nadir of Lewis Hamilton’s first season with Ferrari in 2025 is not a straightforward process, given an abundance of calamities to pick from. 

A lacklustre car created an air of disillusionment between the seven-time Formula One champion and the team who had unveiled him so stylishly back in January that year, with Hamilton posing in front of an alluring F40 and draped in a Ferragamo coat straight out of Michael Corleone’s wardrobe.

Still, if you have to pick out a truly catastrophic low point, then perhaps the sprint race in Qatar last November takes top billing, when Hamilton finished a lowly 17th. His team-mate Charles Leclerc hardly fared better, coming 13th. 

Gazzetta dello Sport had already gone with the “Hamilton, un disastro” headline months before Qatar, so how exactly to define that new low, with Hamilton finishing 46 seconds behind the winner Oscar Piastri? When he spoke to the media afterwards, Hamilton sounded as though he wanted to be anywhere other than in an F1 pit.

“I’d love to be on the beach surfing, maybe in the mountains; those are things I dream about from time to time. It’s been a very difficult year,” Hamilton said.

Tweaks to address the imbalance of the car were introduced throughout the year and continually failed, including a new rear suspension in July, with the SF-25 model proving to be somewhat of an enigma. 

Team radio calls between driver and team increasingly fizzed with frustration. In Miami last year, having been instructed to swap places with Leclerc, Hamilton’s race engineer Riccardo Adami informed him that Williams’s Carlos Sainz was closing in behind. Hamilton expressed his annoyance succinctly. “Do you want me to let him by too?” 

Watching him slog away in an unresponsive car was not pleasant for anybody, least of all Hamilton, insisting that he still had “fire in my belly” and refusing to apologise “for being a fighter”. 

Being an elite quadragenarian athlete comes with constant scrutiny over whether you still have what it takes. Is a notably slower Cristiano Ronaldo at 41 an inspiration in Portugal’s World Cup bid or a hindrance? How far can Serena Williams really progress in either singles or doubles at Wimbledon after her shock return at the age of 44? Subconsciously – perhaps due to contemplating our own personal ageing process, that knee which does not perform as well as it used to – watching superstars in their early 40s can often feel as though you are waiting for the magic to run out.

Even with the obvious issues plaguing the Ferrari, naturally those questions began to quietly creep in last year about Hamilton. What if he was not the saviour Ferrari had hoped could end their ongoing quest for a championship, a drought dating back almost 20 years to Kimi Räikkönen’s 2007 triumph?

That was one of the more thrilling finishes in F1 history, when Räikkönen pipped two rivals to the title by a single point: Fernando Alonso and, of course, Hamilton. The longevity of Alonso, 44, and Hamilton is extraordinary, although no one is expecting Alonso to challenge for the title in his Aston Martin. Hamilton, however, has a serious chance.

The gremlins from last year’s car have been banished and the adjustments made by Ferrari during this season – with an engine upgrade reportedly in the works in time for this weekend’s Austrian GP – have certainly proved effective. From having a car that neither Hamilton or Leclerc could master last year, now Ferrari could end up being the fastest team on the grid. 

After such an imperious start to the year for Mercedes, with six wins out of six and five of them belonging to teenage sensation Kimi Antonelli, there was a risk of a procession to the title. Hamilton’s victory in Barcelona has taken a hammer to that narrative.

With 15 races left in the season, there is ample time for him to eat into Antonelli’s 41-point lead, particularly if Mercedes continue to battle issues of their own after two race-ending battery failures – one each for Antonelli and his team-mate George Russell – in the past three races. In Austria and next weekend at Silverstone is the time for Ferrari and Hamilton to strike.

Sure, the virtual safety car offered a large helping hand in Barcelona-Catalunya, and Hamilton insisted afterwards that he was not getting carried away with dreams of a record-breaking eighth title to move him one clear of Michael Schumacher. 

But that win meant so much on so many levels – a first victory for Ferrari in 35 races and Hamilton’s first race win in almost two years, making him the fourth driver in history to win a race in their 40s following Graham Hill, Sir Jack Brabham and Nigel Mansell. A top three of Hamiton, Russell and the reigning champion Lando Norris in Barcelona was also significant, marking a first all-British podium since Sir Jackie Stewart, Hill and John Surtees in 1968.

Trumping all of those facts, of course, was what it meant for Hamilton to win for the Scuderia, to be a winner for the world’s most famous racing team. 

During that sophisticated unveiling last January, Hamilton revealed that despite all his success with McLaren and Mercedes, the seven world titles, that “part of me has always held on to that dream of racing in red”. 

Hamilton’s first year with Ferrari must have seemed like an unwelcome nightmare. This is much more like it. There is a ground-breaking title to be won, for a driver whose hunger for his sport, and to win, will never fade.

Photograph by Clive Mason/Getty Images