Charles Leclerc warned: “Underestimate Lewis Hamilton’s race craft at your peril”

Ted Kravitz believes Charles Leclerc shouldn’t underestimate Lewis Hamilton’s race craft heading into their first F1 race as teammates at next weekend’s Australian Grand Prix.

The 2025 F1 season finally kicks off next weekend at Albert Park, with Hamilton set to race for Ferrari for the first time in F1.

Hamilton has enjoyed an extensive testing programme ahead of the new season, with several runs in older machinery.

Last week, all 10 F1 teams were present in Bahrain for official pre-season testing across three days.

Ferrari appear to be a step behind McLaren in pure performance, but a true understanding of the pecking order will only become clear after qualifying in Melbourne.

Hamilton joins Ferrari on the back of his most disappointing season to date in F1, particularly in qualifying.

Hamilton only managed to out-qualify George Russell four times across 24 races - making it just the second qualifying head-to-head defeat of his career after 2014 against Nico Rosberg.

When previewing the new season, Kravitz assessed the teammate dynamic between Leclerc and Hamilton - and how that will impact the former.

“There is an unknown. Charles Leclerc has seen Lewis Hamilton close up over the last couple of months,” Kravitz said.

“He’s understood how to drive the car. He’s understood seemingly how Hamilton, who was saying he still has to learn exactly how every little tool that he has at his disposal in terms of differential change, brake balance adjustment or how to start the car with the clutch - things like that.

“It’s second nature to Leclerc, but Hamilton is still learning how Ferrari likes to do those things in the car and the multitude of buttons they’ve got.

“If you could say that is a bit of an advantage on Leclerc’s side, maybe. Leclerc would underestimate Lewis Hamilton’s race craft at his peril. 

He knows not to underestimate Lewis. Lewis is at his best on a Sunday afternoon. So Leclerc is waiting to see what kind of teammate he’s going to have in Australia.”

Are Ferrari on the back foot heading to Australia?

It wasn’t a seamless test for Ferrari in Bahrain, with Hamilton unable to complete a race simulation on the final day of testing.

Hamilton’s final day was halted early after Ferrari found an “anomaly” on the data.

For Leclerc, he managed to complete a full race simulation alongside Lando Norris and Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who were circulating at the same time.

Leclerc was, on average, around 0.5s slower than Norris across a full race distance.

While all the testing caveats remain due to the unusually cool track temperatures and uncertainty about which power modes were being used, McLaren look like they’re the favourites heading into the season-opener.