Mercedes Chief Communications Officer Bradley Lord has revealed Toto Wolff’s attempts to “encourage” a downbeat Lewis Hamilton after his struggles with Ferrari in Formula 1 in 2025.
Hamilton left the German marque after 12 highly successful seasons to join the Maranello-based squad at the start of the 2025 campaign.
But settling in at the iconic Italian team has been a tough task for the seven-time World Champion – who has driven for a non-English team for the very first time in his career.
Hamilton’s arrival at Ferrari carried huge expectations from the Tifosi, but the Briton has proven inept at tackling a tricky SF-25, lagging behind his team-mate Charles Leclerc by quite a hefty margin of 86 points after 24 rounds this year.
To compound his miseries, the 40-year-old has quite publicly struggled to assimilate within the team and its culture, most noticeably being at odds with race engineer Ricardo Adami on countless occasions in 2025.
It all rounded up at the Yas Marina Circuit, two weeks ago, as Hamilton endured a third successive Q1 exit and finished the race in eighth – ending the season without a Grand Prix podium for the first time in the sport.
Speaking about his former driver’s plight, Lord revealed that the team does empathise with Hamilton. “Yes, we feel sorry for him on a human level,” he told CHAMP1.
“Because we know how much heart and soul Lewis puts into his work, how committed he is, how much he trains and so on.
“And sometimes every driver has ups and downs, or phases where you just can’t get it all together, and that hits him hard.”
Wolff has made efforts to ‘encourage’ Hamilton
Hamilton had held a pretty downbeat demeanour throughout the season, with his interviews decreasing in length as he struggled to extract pace from his package.
Lord went on to reveal how Wolff, who travels to select races with Hamilton, has also chipped in to lift his spirits.
“But we try to support him in our own way, or Toto often travels with him from the races and they talk about it a lot and, yes, we try to encourage him,” he revealed.
“Because we know that Lewis Hamilton can still be a benchmark and possibly will continue to be in this sport, and we still believe he can do it.”
That said, while the Brackley-based team wishes nothing but the best for Hamilton, it is equally wary of how quickly things can turn around especially with the 40-year-old.
“I also know that Lewis will only come out stronger from such an experience,” warned Lord looking forward to the 2026 regulations overhaul.
“So that makes me cautious for next year, that he can come back even stronger.”
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