Ferrari boss in foul-mouthed response over Lewis Hamilton’s form

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has hit back at questions over Lewis Hamilton’s form during the early part of the 2025 F1 season.

Hamilton’s tough start to life at Ferrari continued at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix as the seven-time world champion finished where he qualified in seventh and was 31 seconds behind teammate Charles Leclerc, who scored the team’s first podium of the year.

Aside from taking an impressive pole position and victory in the China sprint race, in just his second appearance for Ferrari, Hamilton is on a disappointing run of form.

Asked how Hamilton’s form had fallen off so ‘dramatically’, Vasseur snapped back: “It’s not dramatically. We did five races so far. I know that you want to have the big headlines tomorrow that 'Fred said this’.

"But this is f****** b******t. At the end of the day, we are in competition. You have ups and downs.

"When we have up, we are not world champions. When we have down, we are not nowhere. It's just a competition."

Hamilton has been convincingly outperformed by Leclerc, is seventh in the drivers’ championship, and already 68 points behind leader Oscar Piastri, who claimed his third win in five races in Jeddah.

"I'm not sure that you draw the same conclusion with Max last week when he was seventh. It is like it is. The competition is tight,” Vasseur said.

"You have 10 cars and a couple of tenths. Have a look at Max. He won in Japan. He finished 30 seconds behind Piastri in Bahrain, and in Saudi Arabia he was P2 and had pole position.

"We just have to stay calm. You can do whatever you want. I don't want to worry for you. At least for us as a team, we have to work step by step.

"I think it paid off last year to do hundredths of seconds and hundredths of seconds and we need to keep the same approach.

"I will never be the guy who says we are world champions or we are nowhere. We are a team. We are struggling on the weekend. We have good results on the weekend. It's just that we have to improve step by step and stay calm.”

Lewis Hamilton braced for ‘painful’ season

Hamilton described his race in Saudi Arabia as “horrible” and conceded the 2025 season is looking “painful”.

"Nothing positive to take from today," Hamilton said, "apart from Charles on the podium, which is great for the team.

"It was horrible, not enjoyable at all. I was just sliding around. It's pretty bad.

“I don't know how much longer I'll struggle for but it's definitely painful. Just going to try and improve from week to week.

"At the moment there is no fix so this is how it's going to be for the rest or the year. It's going to be painful.

"In qualifying it's me extracting performance and in the race I tried everything and the car just didn't want to go any quicker.”

Vasseur insisted Hamilton will have Ferrari’s full support.

“I will be 2000 per cent behind him,” he added. “I will give him support and we will start from tomorrow morning to try to find solutions and reasons and to work on it early in the morning.

"But honestly, I am not too worried. If you have a look on what he did in China or what he did in the race in Bahrain last week or even on the first part of the session in this weekend, the potential is there for sure.

"We just have to adjust the balance because we are, collectively, Lewis and us, we are struggling with the balance of his car and [how] he is working the tyres.

"It's a kind of negative spot but I think the potential of the car is there and we will try to solve that.”