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Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur has hinted that Lewis Hamilton’s relationship with Toto Wolff became strained in his final season at Mercedes.
Hamilton caught Wolff and the entire world of F1 by surprise when he announced before the season started that he would be joining Ferrari in 2025.
While he signed off with two more victories, extending his record for most wins with a single constructor to 84, he was outperformed by teammate George Russell and fell out of the top six in the standings for the first time.
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According to Vasseur, who has known Hamilton for two decades but is also close to Wolff, the pair became distant in that last year at Brackley.
Hamilton and Wolff are the most successful driver/team boss duo in F1 history (six world championships), but frustrations mounted over Mercedes’ failure to deliver a title-contending car in the ground-effect era.
Wolff may also have felt betrayed by Hamilton opting out of the second year of his contract and unexpectedly joining one of the team’s biggest rivals.
“He had a very complicated 2024 season at Mercedes, without really speaking much with Toto throughout the year, and he was outperformed by Russell in qualifying,” Vasseur said in his new biography, ‘En Piste’.
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“What saved him was the group of people who had been working with him for 10 years and with whom he had won six titles. He was able to rely on that warmth and that closeness to get through it.”
Fred Vasseur admits Lewis Hamilton ‘lost his way’ at Ferrari in 2025
Reflecting on Hamilton’s first year at Ferrari, Vasseur said the Englishman was ‘on the defensive’ in an unfamiliar environment.
As he said throughout last season, the congested nature of the field at the end of a ruleset worked against his superstar signing as a relatively small deficit to Charles Leclerc was punished.
“Last year, he did not have that reassuring environment, while everything was changing for him: the language, the car, the software, the systems that are the same as at Mercedes but have different names,” Vasseur said.
“There were hundreds of things like that which put him on the defensive, while on the other side of the garage there was a Charles who was firmly established within the team. At home!
“He found himself behind. If Charles was P3/P4, Lewis, just one tenth slower, would find himself P7/P8! He eventually lost his way, even though he also managed some very strong weekends, like in Mexico. The pace was there.”
“Starting again from a blank sheet this season can only help him.”
Acclimatised to Ferrari and driving a car that he helped develop, Hamilton has looked like his old self this year with a win and five podiums in nine races.
Outwardly, his relationship with Wolff appears to be good. The Austrian congratulated him on his first Ferrari podium in China and there was also a warm embrace between the two after the Monaco GP.
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