Ferrari warned prioritising Lewis Hamilton’s comfort could alienate Charles Leclerc

Juan Pablo Montoya has warned Ferrari that prioritising Lewis Hamilton’s comfort could alienate Charles Leclerc.

Ferrari have endured a disappointing start to the 2025 F1 season.

Neither Leclerc nor Hamilton have finished on the podium in any of the opening four races.

The only highlight for Ferrari has been Hamilton’s sprint race triumph in Shanghai.

In terms of the teammate head-to-head, Leclerc has tended to be the quicker of the two Ferraris, which isn’t too surprising given Hamilton is new to the team.

To aid Hamilton with his acclimatisation process, Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur has said they will look to make changes to ensure the seven-time world champion is more “comfortable”.

Montoya believes that focusing on Hamilton could cause issues for Ferrari with Leclerc in the long term.

“Lewis Hamilton is beating himself up because he's not performing, but he's not comfortable,” Montoya told Plejmo. “I think everybody's working hard to make him comfortable. But the consequence of that is if they really focus on making Lewis comfortable, they're going to have issues with Charles in the long term.

“Look at Max. Every time Max is really, really quick, the teammate is miles away. When the teammate is close, they're not that quick. They're not as competitive.

“Look at Checo. Two years ago, when Checo started the season so well, people thought the two drivers would be fighting it out for the championship. But when they finally made the car good enough for what Max wanted, Checo couldn't drive it.

“I think Ferrari might go through the same thing. As they develop the car for Lewis, to make him comfortable, all those things are going to compromise the performance of Charles. So that's going to be interesting to see how far Ferrari is going to go out of the way to make Lewis comfortable.”

Montoya tells Leclerc to “learn” from Hamilton

Leclerc is still waiting for his first serious F1 title challenge.

Leclerc challenged Verstappen in the first half of 2022.

However, a combination of driver errors and Ferrari blunders on the pit wall put Leclerc out of title contention, even before the infamous technical directive which curtailed Ferrari’s season in 2022.

It looks like Leclerc will have to wait until 2026 to have the opportunity to fight for the title.

Montoya believes that Leclerc can learn a lot from Hamilton during this time.

“I think Charles has a great opportunity to learn from Lewis,” Montoya added.

“Even if he gets close to Lewis, I think he could learn a lot from Lewis. Charles does a really good job already, but I think he could learn from Lewis a lot.

“And I think if he is smart about it, he can end up with a Ferrari that can actually win championships.”