Lewis Hamilton's first words on Ferrari F1 2025 car at Bahrain testing

Lewis Hamilton has delivered an initial judgement on Ferrari’s F1 2025 car after the first day of pre-season testing in Bahrain.

Ferrari’s new superstar driver was 13th-fastest on the timesheets on Wednesday behind the wheel of the SF-25.

Like most drivers, his car was fitted with aero rakes initially before Ferrari studied both his rear and front wings on a first day of official F1 testing in 2025.

Lewis Hamilton reacts to testing Ferrari SF-25

“Testing is always exciting,” said Hamilton.

“It’s the first time you get to see what everyone has been developing and can start to get a feel for your own car and the year ahead.

“Being here with Scuderia Ferrari HP and in the SF-25 for the first time is an incredible feeling.

“Our focus right now is on experimenting with different things, gathering as much data as possible and getting familiar with the car, and we’ve already learned a lot.

“It’s too early to really understand performance, but everything feels good and as a team we’re working on the best way to optimise each run.

“There’s more to do over the next few days to get through our programme and understand the car to the best of our ability, but right now I'm looking forward to getting out there again.”

Teammate Charles Leclerc was fourth-fastest and said: “It feels good to be back on track.

“The whole team put a lot of effort into the SF-25 project over the winter break, so it’s exciting to finally get down to work with it.

“It’s always a positive to have a smooth session without anything unexpected happening in terms of your run plan, although of course, it’s still too early to come to any conclusions about our performance.

“We’re going to analyse our data from today and make use of what we learn tonight when we start work again.”