Lewis Hamilton told what he must now do to go ‘nose to nose’ with Charles Leclerc at Ferrari in 2025

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Lewis Hamilton is officially halfway through his first season as a Ferrari driver and it has not gone entirely to plan.

While the seven-time world champion has secured his first win for the team in the Sprint race in Shanghai, he is yet to finish on the podium on Sunday for Ferrari. The Maranello outfit are winless in 2025 after 12 races.

Yet despite this, Ferrari are second in the constructors’ championship, with Charles Leclerc grabbing four podiums. Their position in the standings may be slightly misleading, given the difficulties the drivers have faced with the SF-25 this season.

The car has a narrow operating window, with Hamilton struggling with power steering through high-speed corners. He has not had a machine capable of fighting with McLaren consistently, as he sits 131 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri.

Many believed that Hamilton would give teammate Leclerc a hard time at Ferrari, but the Monegasque driver has had the upper hand in 2025. With him being the only Ferrari driver to score a podium this season, Allan McNish has now told the Brit what he must do to battle his teammate.

Allan McNish tells Lewis Hamilton he must ‘fight pretty hard’ to ‘nose to nose’ with Charles Leclerc

Speaking via the RacingNews365 podcast, McNish says Hamilton must ‘fight pretty hard’ if he wants to go ‘nose to nose’ with Leclerc. He knew that the 27-year-old was well-established at Ferrari and that it would be a tough battle to draw alongside him in unfamiliar machinery.

“I think Charles is one of the fastest drivers on the grid. You are going into Charles’s house to some extent. He knows where everything is, who does what. He’s been there, he’s grown up there,” said McNish.

“So it was always, and it doesn’t matter about Lewis’s seven world titles. It was always going to be taking time to get up to speed. And you’ve seen, I would say, the flashes of Lewis as we know and what he can do.

“And it’s about trying to get the environment round about him and that’s consistent. It doesn’t seem that the communications’ always 100% between him and his engineer. I’m not sure if that’s just excerpts of radio communication to create the story.

“Sounds like sometimes there’s an alignment, but that will come with time as well. Because the engineers have to understand what the driver wants, when he wants it, how he wants it. And obviously we hear the end result of it.

“But I think Lewis is going to have to fight pretty hard for his seat. And I don’t mean his seat as in he’ll lose his seat, but in terms of, to be able to be right there nose to nose with Charles through the rest of the year.”

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Lewis Hamilton is pushing to change Ferrari’s philosophy and improve the team

The seven-time champion is hoping to find some improvements in the second half of the season. Ferrari are set to make a ‘quantum leap’ with their rear suspension upgrade, which could draw them closer to McLaren.

Intensive work is going on behind the scenes in Maranello as Hamilton is ‘preaching’ for Ferrari to change their philosophy. He is working on adapting his driving style to the SF-25, while Ferrari want to extract the best out of the 40-year-old and his technical feedback.

Leclerc’s driver coach is pushing Ferrari to listen to Hamilton and his feedback. The changes are set to greatly benefit both drivers, which will put them in good standing for the 2026 F1 regulations.

Hamilton will be banking on next season’s rules to provide him with a title-winning car, but they may have a mammoth task on their hands. There are concerns that Ferrari’s power unit is behind Mercedes and Audi.