Has worrying Mercedes trend followed Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari?

Lewis Hamilton’s struggles at Ferrari amid a disappointing start to the 2025 F1 season have been analysed.

Seven-time world champion Hamilton has endured a frustrating and underwhelming start to life at Ferrari since making a blockbuster switch from Mercedes which set tongues wagging over the winter.

Hamilton and Ferrari joining forces promised to be a partnership for the ages but so far has yielded little success, aside from the 40-year-old Briton’s impressive pole position and victory in the China sprint race.

Otherwise, Hamilton has not finished higher than fifth in a grand prix and has been convincingly outperformed by teammate Charles Leclerc in both qualifying and on race day, having struggled to click with Ferrari’s SF-25.

Former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer reckons Hamilton is suffering from a trait of Ferrari’s car that also plagued him during his final few years with Mercedes.

“Hamilton is a driver that has struggled with snappy rear instability for the last couple of seasons,” Palmer wrote in his post-Miami Grand Prix column for F1.com.

“It was this inconsistency that he was struggling with in the Mercedes last year and that trend seems to have followed him to Ferrari so far too. He generally likes to attack the corners with high entry speed, but needs a stable rear end in order to do that effectively, and we saw him trying to rework his driving style in Melbourne to get more out of this car.

“Clearly that process is still ongoing, as is trying to find the right rhythm with his race engineer Riccardo Adami – and these are all teething problems that I doubt both team and driver were expecting to still be issues this far into the season.

“It’s a home race for the Scuderia coming up next though and the start of a key triple header. It’ll be a tough test for the team on circuits where both downforce and efficiency are critical.

“But despite what we hear on the radio, if the team can find a better window for the car then I’ve no doubt Ferrari still have the drivers and procedures in place to deliver victories.”

Ferrari the ‘most disappointing team’ of F1 2025

Ferrari have managed just one podium this year and lie fourth in the constructors’ championship, 152 points behind leaders McLaren.

The Italian outfit had been tipped to be McLaren’s nearest challengers after narrowly missing out on the constructors’ crown in 2024, but Ferrari have often found themselves having only the fourth or fifth-fastest car during the early rounds of the new campaign.

“In my view, Ferrari have been the most disappointing team so far, having finished 2024 so strongly,” Palmer continued.

“With the signing of Hamilton, this should have been a glory year for them, and we saw a glimpse of that early on in China, when Lewis was happier with the car and took the Sprint win, and the team were competitive.

“It then transpired that the configuration that Ferrari were running in China was illegal, with Hamilton being thrown out for excessive plank wear on Sunday night.

“All of Formula 1’s cars in this era are extremely sensitive to ride height. The lower you can run the car to the ground, the faster you go as you get more downforce thanks to the ground effect. The limit to this is plank wear and legality.

“Ferrari’s car seems more performance-sensitive to this than most, and by raising the car they lose a greater percentage of performance as the set-up falls further from their optimised window.

“In Miami, the team were chasing ‘overall grip’, and every time we went onboard with Hamilton during qualifying, you could see him sliding on both axles, but particularly the rear.

“This is a clear indication that the car isn’t producing enough downforce and the floor upgrade the team brought a few races ago is clearly still not working properly, even if there have been stronger performances from Leclerc in Bahrain and Jeddah.”