Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari problems became even worse when the FIA changed one F1 rule in 2025

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Lewis Hamilton has rarely shown his best form since the switch to ground-effect aerodynamics in 2022. It remains to be seen whether he can ever get it back.

Hamilton was one lap away from becoming an eight-time F1 world champion in 2021, but he’s only won two races since. While, for the most part, his cars haven’t been fast enough to contend, he’s started losing out to his teammates, too.

George Russell outscored him during the 2022 and 2024 seasons, with last year’s intra-team head-to-head particularly one-sided. Hamilton’s inherent discomfort in this generation of machinery has been exacerbated by the transition to Ferrari, whose 2025 car seems particularly unpredictable.

Charles Leclerc is now beating the Englishman at a similar rate to Russell. The gap stands at 42 points as the season pauses for the summer break and, on the evidence of recent rounds, it will only increase in the second half of the year.

Lewis Hamilton has suffered from the FIA’s front-wing clampdown

According to a report from Formula Passion, Hamilton particularly struggles with the ground-effect cars because they’re ‘inherently difficult to balance between high and low speeds’. This leads to understeer in slow corners and oversteer in faster sections.

Of course, this is a challenge for every driver, but it seems to be at odds with Hamilton’s driving style most of all. He’s started the second-most races in F1 history behind Fernando Alonso, and has previously talked about being set in his ways.

Sky Germany pundit Ralf Schumacher believes Hamilton can’t cope with a nervous rear end, but a degree of instability may be intrinsic to these cars.

Ahead of the Spanish GP at the end of May, the FIA introduced a new technical directive subjecting teams to stricter load tests on their front wings. This was designed to crack down on unlawful flexibility.

Fred Vasseur was optimistic about the rule change, hoping it would bring Ferrari closer to McLaren. The Woking outfit haven’t been perceptibly weakened, and Hamilton is said to be suffering even more.

Formula Passion state that the directive ‘certainly didn’t help Hamilton’ because it slightly accentuated the aforementioned oversteer in high-speed corners.

Lewis Hamilton told Ferrari he’d cut out one Mercedes habit

There isn’t a striking difference in Hamilton’s results either side of the clampdown, but perhaps it stalled his efforts to build confidence in the car.

Earlier in the year, Hamilton trialled a host of different set-ups to try and find the elusive working window of the Ferrari. He eventually conceded that Leclerc had taken the car in the best available direction.

• READ MORE: FIA will not rule out tweaking F1 rule again after Lewis Hamilton branded change ‘a waste of money’

Hamilton told Ferrari he wouldn’t experiment as much as he did at Mercedes. But rather than a fresh start, this year has felt like the continuation of an alarming decline that accelerated last year.

The 105-time race-winner can only hope that the major overhaul of the regulations this winter provides that opportunity to reset. If it doesn’t, then 2026 could feasibly be the final year of his F1 career.