Lewis Hamilton has realised that he wasted precious time at Ferrari trying to replicate what he did at Mercedes

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Lewis Hamilton has been struggling to get to grips with the Ferrari SF-25 in his debut season with the team, often falling behind Charles Leclerc in Grands Prix.

His 12th-place finish at the Hungarian Grand Prix was Hamilton’s worst result in Ferrari colours yet, with the Brit taking at least one point at every other race he has finished.

Hamilton is contrasting Michael Schumacher, with the latter achieving race wins and multiple podiums in the first half of his maiden season at the Prancing Horse in 1996.

The German driver had to wait until his fifth season before he was successful in bringing a driver’s championship back to Maranello.

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Lewis Hamilton’s gap to Charles Leclerc in races stems from wasting time experimenting with setup

Despite being highly successful with the team, Hamilton noted a habit he had at Mercedes that often hampered his race weekends, which was spending too much time trying to experiment with different setups.

In Bahrain, Hamilton pointed out that he wants to be more like Charles Leclerc, in that the Monegasque chooses a setup at the beginning of the weekend and runs with it.

The habit began at the beginning of 2022, at a point in time when Mercedes was on the back foot due to the radical development map they chose to take for the new regulations that came into effect that year.

Hamilton spent three years at Mercedes trying to find the optimal setup, severely hampering his performance in qualifying.

In a report by Formula Passion, it has been stated that Hamilton has now given up trying to set up the car closer to his own ‘preferences’ after realising that Leclerc’s philosophy was the only one ‘capable’ of making the SF-25 work.

It’s clear to see that, at this point, the seven-time world champion is happy to try anything in his Ferrari in order to become competitive and battle with the front-runners like Leclerc has been doing.

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How has Lewis Hamilton fared against Charles Leclerc in the Ferrari teammate head-to-head?

The Ferrari pair of Leclerc and Hamilton currently occupy the fifth and sixth spots of the drivers’ standings, respectively. The Monegasque’s gap of 42 points over Hamilton can be attributed to the five podiums he has claimed over the course of the season, to Hamilton’s zero.

The Ferrari teammate head-to-head paints a clearer picture of Hamilton’s struggles this season in the SF-25. The seven-time world champion has beaten Leclerc to the chequered flag just twice this season, in Imola and at his home race at Silverstone.

Qualifying has also seen Leclerc walk all over Hamilton for the majority of the season. The 27-year-old has out-qualified his more experienced F1 teammate 10 times in 2025, with Hamilton only having bragging rights on four occasions.

Despite the tough start to the campaign, Toto Wolff shared why Hamilton refuses to blame anyone but himself, highlighting it as a key characteristic of great drivers. The Brit will be wanting a change of results soon, though, if he doesn’t want to dethrone Didier Pironi for the most races at Ferrari without a podium.