Lewis Hamilton admitted that he is braced to experience a “painful” debut campaign with Ferrari in Formula 1 in 2025 as he rued a “horrible” Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Hamilton endured a bruising weekend in Jeddah as he came home in seventh place, a seismic 31 seconds behind team-mate Charles Leclerc, who secured a podium.
Leclerc capitalised on an extended opening stint to pip Lando Norris’ McLaren to a morale-boosting third, a strategy that Hamilton implied he couldn’t have replicated.
The Briton, who qualified more than five tenths behind Leclerc, was despondent as he expressed that the event comprised “zero positives” he could cling to as solace.
“Nothing positive from today,” Hamilton bemoaned. “Except for Charles finishing on the podium, which is great for the team.
“It was horrible. It was horrible. Not enjoyable at all. I was just sliding around.
“First stint, massive understeer, car not turning. And then massive deg. And then the second stint, slightly better balance, but still just no pace. Yeah, pretty bad.”
Hamilton appeared to have expelled the tribulations that encapsulated his last season with Mercedes when he won on his second Ferrari outing in the Sprint in China.
But Leclerc has had the upper hand since then and the gap between them is growing with each passing weekend, a pattern that Hamilton “doesn’t have an answer to”.
“Struggling to feel the car underneath me,” he expanded. “But there’s no particular thing. There’s nothing to say ‘hey, this is the issue’.
“In qualifying it’s [about] me extracting performance. In the race today, I tried everything, and the car just didn’t want to go quicker.”
Hamilton to emulate Leclerc?
Hamilton suggested that emulating his team-mate’s set-ups could be an option amid Leclerc’s revelation that he has discovered the ideal balance with Ferrari’s SF-25.
Asked whether he could look at Leclerc’s data to ease his struggles, Hamilton replied: “He’s been driving this car for a long time, so he definitely knows it really well.
“There’s plenty in the data, for sure.
“I mean, honestly, like, it doesn’t look massively different in the data. Just… I go slower through the corners.”
He added: “We do have slightly different set-ups, I have to look and see whether that set-up is the way the car likes to be.
“Yeah, him and his side are definitely obviously doing a better job [than ours].”
Hamilton warns more struggles to come
However, the seven-time F1 champion has warned that such measures will not be a permanent solution to the initial obstacles that have blighted his time with Ferrari.
“I think I’ll struggle also in Miami,” he conceded. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll struggle for, but it’s definitely painful.”
Pressed on whether this could be a consistent theme over the next weeks and even months, Hamilton replied: “At the moment there’s no fix.
“So … this is how it’s going to be for the rest of the year. It’s going to be painful.”
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