Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff is confident that Lewis Hamilton can turn things around, despite his struggle to hit the ground running with Ferrari in Formula 1.
Hamilton’s highly anticipated move to Ferrari, after winning six titles with Mercedes between 2014 and 2024, hasn’t delivered the expected results for the Briton or the Italian marque.
10 rounds into the 2025 season, the SF-25 has failed to showcase the pace required to challenge McLaren, while Hamilton, on the other hand, is finding it hard to adapt to his new car after having only driven Mercedes-powered machinery throughout his F1 career.
The seven-time World Champion has shown sparks of brilliance behind the wheel, picking up his first win as a Ferrari driver in the Chinese Grand Prix Sprint Race.
However, it is his lack of consistency and his gap to team-mate Charles Leclerc that has been bothering the Tifosi who are following his progress with close scrutiny.
Wolff, Hamilton’s ex-boss, believes that it is only a matter of time before the 40-year-old assimilates himself completely within the Maranello-based squad, smoothing over the issues that are being detrimental to the Briton’s pace on track.
“I think everybody needs to have a period of adaption. A different car, a different DNA for how that vehicle drives, new engineering team that you have to work with together. It’s an all-Italian team. He’s a British guy parachuted in there and that takes time,” he told the Bloomberg Hot Pursuit podcast.
Wolff expects Hamilton’s results to only get stronger with each passing race weekend as he unearths a “pattern” inherent to his ex driver.
“Also, we have seen a little bit of a pattern that Lewis, the beginning of the season, he needs to come in to find that mojo and then the second half of the season has been always very strong. So do not ever write Lewis Hamilton off,” he warned.
Hamilton urges Ferrari upgrades to fight at the front
The Canadian Grand Prix represented a step forward for Hamilton, who finished sixth at the chequered flag.
After qualifying on the third row, Hamilton was dealt a bad hand by the racing gods after contact with a groundhog in the early stages left him with considerable damage to his floor.
Despite a 20-point loss of downforce from there onwards, he was able to salvage a points-scoring result for the Scuderia.
Yet, going into the Austrian Grand Prix, next weekend, Hamilton has outlined how the team can push further up the grid.
“We’ve not had any upgrades or anything like that so it’s the same car for quite some time now,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
Ferrari’s last upgrade package came at Imola. At Monaco, the team brought only circuit-specific modifications to the SF-25 and in Barcelona, the new front-wing was in conjunction with the Technical Directive (TD) introduced by the FIA.
“We’ve been improving our qualifying from Monaco onwards, which is positive, but ultimately, we need upgrades, man. We need an upgrade to be able to fight the guys up front.”
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