Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher share one flaw that Ferrari didn’t expect from a world champion

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Lewis Hamilton told Ferrari shortly before Formula 1’s summer break that they should ‘change the driver’ due to his ‘useless’ form. It was a remarkable comment from the sport’s most successful competitor, but he’d been on this psychological trajectory since the end of his Mercedes career.

At the Qatar GP, the penultimate round of the 2024 season, Hamilton said he ‘definitely wasn’t fast anymore’. That was the culmination of a career-worst year where his confidence unravelled.

Hamilton felt ‘reinvigorated’ when he joined Ferrari, or so he said at the season launch event in London. But he slipped back into the off-track habits that characterised his Mercedes decline, most notably in Hungary.

The seven-time world champion has appeared more resilient since the summer break. He didn’t catastrophise after crashing out of the Dutch GP; perhaps he’s realised that his self-flagellation was only harming the atmosphere at the team.

Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher are both surprisingly ‘fragile’

Michael Schumacher wasn’t quite as decorated as Hamilton when he joined Ferrari in 1996. But he arrived at his peak, rather than his lowest ebb.

The German had won back-to-back world championships with Bennetton in ’94 and ’95. In the years that followed, he helped to rebuild Ferrari into the team that produced the most dominant run in F1 history at the turn of the century.

By reputation, Schumacher is one of the most ruthless and robotic drivers ever. But in an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, Luca di Montezemolo, who ran Ferrari during his heyday, said Die Regenmeister was ‘more fragile than we thought’.

Similarly, Hamilton’s struggles have taken the current regime by surprise. Speaking on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast recently, Fred Vasseur said Ferrari ‘underestimated the importance of the change’.

They didn’t realise he was going to find the lifestyle and cultural changes so difficult. ‘The expectation’ and ‘the noise’ around the team were ‘huge’, and that has clearly had an effect.

Toto Wolff compares Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari move to Michael Schumacher’s Mercedes comeback

It seems Ferrari assumed, given the stature of both drivers, that they would be virtually bulletproof. But even world champions experience self-doubt.

Schumacher needed time to ‘transform’ Ferrari, but that’s not a luxury Hamilton has. He will turn 41 this winter as he enters the last guaranteed year of his contract.

Hamilton’s instincts and reflexes may already be waning, with one pundit calling it ‘a fact of life’. But there’s hope that the 2026 cars will better suit his driving style and bring out his top form again.

Former boss Toto Wolff says ‘nobody will remember’ Hamilton’s time at Ferrari if he doesn’t win a title, just as Schumacher’s three-year comeback at Mercedes has become a footnote. But the British driver will be holding out hope that this can be a glorious final chapter.