Ferrari can’t afford to underestimate Lewis Hamilton issue again after 2025 ‘wake-up call’

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Lewis Hamilton will discover in the coming weeks whether his move to Ferrari will be the Formula 1 swansong that he’s always dreamed of.

Although most drivers will be non-committal after three rounds of pre-season testing before the campaign starts at the Australian Grand Prix, they will know very quickly whether they’ve got a winning car or not.

Lewis Hamilton has more experience than anyone on the grid when it comes to that feeling of whether a car is going to be a championship contender or not.

Has Lewis Hamilton already won his last F1 race?

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At McLaren and Mercedes, he enjoyed that success, but his first year at Ferrari gave him a swift reality check that it might not be easy to win a title with a third different team.

Charles Leclerc was left equally frustrated, and already rival F1 teams are monitoring Leclerc’s situation in case he becomes available on the driver market.

Hamilton is unlikely to be on any other team’s radars if he leaves Ferrari, making how the Scuderia tackle the upcoming regulation changes even more important.

READ MORE: Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton’s life outside F1 from net worth to family

Ferrari ‘underestimated’ the impact of giving up 2025 on Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc

Journalist Chris Medland was speaking on the RACER Debrief about Ferrari’s 2025 season and what they need to do this year.

He explained: “I think it’s been a wake-up call for Ferrari and Lewis about how tough this will be and whether actually he’ll get to a level he wants next year too.

“But I think for the team, they had to write off last year, as painful as it was. And again, Fred said he underestimated the psychological impact on the drivers and the mechanics and everyone trackside because you would show up every weekend and have a tough one, and the pressure doesn’t alleviate at Ferrari.

“But they knew very early on that they’d made a mistake with the suspension that you mentioned that they had to rectify mid-season and try and understand, but that was going to leave them so far back in a championship.

“If they are at least one of the leading challenges to any team, if it’s not a Ferrari engine that’s the best one, let’s again theoretically say it’s a Mercedes engine, then Ferrari engines need to be one of the leading challenges to Mercedes-powered teams.

“They don’t have to be winning. That’s obviously what they want to be doing. But it’s far harder to say that’s what you’re going to do at the start of a new ruleset. So they just need to be competitive and have good foundations to build from.”

READ MORE: All you need to know about Scuderia Ferrari from team principal to factory

Ferrari in danger of tarnishing Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 1 legacy

It was always going to take Hamilton time to adapt to his new surroundings at Ferrari, but team principal Fred Vasseur would have hoped that the gap to Leclerc would have narrowed by the end of the season.

There are plenty of caveats that Ferrari can use for Hamilton finishing 86 points behind Leclerc in the championship.

The lack of development of their car in a direction that would have suited the seven-time world champion was an issue, and Hamilton has always struggled during the ground-effect era.

Ferrari staff weren’t too pleased with Hamilton’s feedback at times, but their greatest champions, Michael Schumacher and Niki Lauda, both arrived in Maranello with fresh ideas and a new perspective that led them to glory.

If the Scuderia don’t produce a top car in 2026 and choose not to follow Hamilton’s instructions, then his time in the sport will end with disappointment.

Nobody wants that for the 41-year-old, but Ferrari can’t afford to repeat the mistakes they made with both of their drivers last season.