How fast was Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton? F1 pre-season lap time analysis

Lewis Hamilton has completed his first F1 pre-season with Ferrari ahead of his debut race with them in a fortnight’s time.

The seven-time world champion has had one-and-a-half days to get up to speed with Ferrari’s 2025 challenger in Bahrain before his first race with the Italian team at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on 16 March.

Despite his final day ending early when Ferrari curtailed his running prematurely before he was able to complete a planned race simulation, it was a largely positive test for Hamilton.

The 40-year-old Briton ended up sixth in the timesheet on Friday, 0.8 seconds off former Mercedes teammate George Russell who set the pace on the third and final day.

Hamilton was nearly half a second faster than new teammate Charles Leclerc on the final day of testing but he did use a tyre compound one step softer and had the better of the track conditions in the afternoon session, while Leclerc’s best lap was set in the morning.

Hamilton second-fastest overall

Perhaps more encouraging is the fact that Hamilton’s outright fastest lap, set during the final hour of Thursday morning’s session with C3 Pirelli tyres, was the second-quickest of the entire test.

Hamilton posted a 1m29.379s which put him second on the best lap times, just 0.031s behind Williams’ Carlos Sainz, the driver he has replaced at Ferrari.

It was also four-tenths quicker than what Leclerc managed on the same C3 compounds on the afternoon of day two, through light drizzle lingered in the air throughout Thursday, while temperatures were unusually low for Bahrain.

Hamilton’s best lap was also quicker than Ferrari’s Q3 lap from qualifying at last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix, but slower than the 1m29.165 outright fastest lap Leclerc produced in Q2.

Meanwhile, Ferrari’s best lap from 2024 pre-season testing in Bahrain was 1m29.931 set by Sainz on day two. In contrast Leclerc’s was a 1m30.322s. Both were set on Pirelli’s C4 tyre.

Hamilton’s quickest Mercedes lap time from Bahrain’s 2024 test was a 1m31.256s on day two. Overall, it was the 10th fastest-time set during the test.

Naturally, lap times would be expected to be quicker this year given the teams have had several months to continue to develop their cars heading into what will be the final season before a major regulation overhaul.

These sorts of comparisons are all subjective, particularly given that pre-season testing is a typically unreliable indicator of actual competitive performance.

Factors such as fuel loads and engine modes - which have a major impact on performance - are not revealed by the teams, who try to keep their cards as close to their chest as possible on the eve of a new season.

Ultimately, we will not truly know where Hamilton or Ferrari stand until the season opener in Melbourne in two weeks’ time.

Nevertheless, it is still interesting to consider how Hamilton fared following such a blockbuster switch after 12 seasons with Mercedes.

Full Bahrain F1 2025 pre-season testing results

Hamilton admits Ferrari ‘have work to do’

Speaking before he drove the SF-25 on Friday, Hamilton did concede that Ferrari “definitely have some work to do to improve” before the new season begins in Australia.

"It's hard to know what fuel loads everyone is running so you have to take everything with a pinch of salt,” Hamilton explained.

“[McLaren] won the constructors' [title] last year. We expect them to be one of the quickest if not the quickest. As with Red Bull, they dominated for many years. We've definitely got some work to do to improve.”

But after a difficult final few years with Mercedes, Hamilton said being at Ferrari is the “most positive feeling” he has had in a long time.

“I've learned that you really can't judge too much from the first outlook,” he said. “I definitely think in past years, particularly in the previous generation of car, it was much easier to know where you stood quite early on.

“But I would say this is the most positive feeling that I've had in a long time. That’s all I can really say for now.”

Hamilton also provided more details on where he is at in the process of fully adapting himself to Ferrari’s 2025 F1 car and the Italian team.

“I still feel that there's still quite a bit to come,” Hamilton added. “Fortunately, I got to drive the 2023 car. So, I've really been able to compare to the 2024 and the 2023 car and see where they've progressed, the problems they had on those two cars and how they've improved into this one.

“Obviously I didn't get to do the test at the end of the year, so for me, I started relatively late compared to others that have come before me – like Sebastian [Vettel] started here in November [2014], so he had a good two months, whereas for me it's been this [one] month period that I've had.

“So, a lot has been crammed in, in that time. But I personally like to just jump in the deep end and figure it out. That's what we're doing, but of course we're going through the processes and I feel like in this period of time we've built a really good foundation.”