Ferrari’s F1 2025 car vow is good news for Lewis Hamilton

Ferrari say they will adapt their 2025 F1 car to better suit Lewis Hamilton.

Seven-time world champion Hamilton bounced back from a disappointing ninth in qualifying to claim fifth in Bahrain last weekend and secure his best grand prix finish since making his blockbuster switch to Ferrari.

Hamilton was left in a positive mood and believes he has now “figured out” how to best drive Ferrari’s 2025 challenger after a mixed start to life at F1’s most iconic team.

After Sunday’s race, Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur revealed the team are aiming to adapt their SF-25 to Hamilton, though he stressed his star signing also needs to “do a step”.

“He won't replace 12 years of collaboration in two weeks or in two races, that means for sure we need to improve but this is true for every team in the paddock, our DNA is to try and do a better job,” Vasseur said.

“It's good to have Lewis with this mindset of 'OK I have to also improve myself, I need to adapt myself to the car'. We'll work on the car and adapt the car to Lewis but he also has to do a step. I think this between us is done in a positive and constructive way.

“We have to stay calm in terms of judgement of the performance because sometimes for almost nothing you can change a good weekend to a very poor one, and visa versa.

“It means I appreciated the direction of Lewis yesterday, I did my best to push him a little bit and today was in a very good shape and strong shape. Let's start from there next week and hope to do [better].”

Is Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari stint being judged too quickly?

Hamilton has endured an up and down start to his Ferrari stint and has so far been outperformed by teammate Charles Leclerc. 

After much hype and anticipation following his switch from Mercedes, Hamilton could only manage 10th on a lacklustre debut at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

The 40-year-old Briton did impressively claim pole position and victory in the China sprint, only to be disqualified from the main grand prix due to excessive plank wear after a difficult run to sixth.

Japan was another tricky weekend, with Hamilton finishing a disappointing seventh. But he came away from Bahrain feeling like he had made an important breakthrough.

Asked if Hamilton is being judged too soon, Vasseur said: “I was not expecting something different, after China we were speaking about the prize-giving ceremony, after China race two that it was a disaster.

“In terms of management, we have to take it a bit easy, to calm down, we have ups and downs as everybody. The issue is probably that the up for us are a bit higher and the downs are a bit lower.

“It means if we want to keep a consistent approach, and we did it very well the last two years. We have to stay calm, try to improve by hundredths of a second.

“I'm convinced we'll do the same job as we did the last two years.”