Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur is refusing to rule out making key changes for Lewis Hamilton in 2026, after the Brit’s tricky start to life with the Formula 1 giants.
The Brit endured a difficult 2025 with the Scuderia, finishing sixth in the Drivers’ Championship, the best part of 100 points adrift of team-mate Charles Leclerc.
Hamilton, his Sprint win in China excepted, failed to finish in the top three all year, becoming only the seventh full-time driver in Ferrari history to do so.
A great deal of Hamilton struggles did come from the problematic SF-25, which denied Leclerc a win and saw the Maranello squad finish fourth in the Constructors’ Championship.
There were also a number of incidents in which Hamilton appeared to be engaging in testy exchanges with his race engineer, Riccardo Adami.
This has led Vasseur, speaking to Corriere Della Sera, to outline his desire to ensure Hamilton is able to extract much more next year.
“We need to improve our collaboration,” he said. “He needs to try to get more out of the car he has. Every detail counts.
“It’s also about understanding each other better. We know each other better on the other side of the garage [Leclerc] knowing what Lewis needs and what he wants. I also need to understand what he wants.”
Vasseur was tight-lipped whether this meant shuffling Adami into another role and offering Hamilton a new race engineer, saying: “We evaluate all options.”
Vasseur admits to ‘underestimating’ Hamilton transition from Mercedes to Ferrari
A change of teams will always bring new challenges for a driver, namely the aforementioned race engineer, a relationship Hamilton enjoyed with Peter Bonnington at Mercedes.
But Vasseur admitted that there were also a myriad of things that he minimised amid Hamilton’s move to Ferrari, and believes those details cost Hamilton better positions in qualifying and the race across the campaign.
“I underestimated the extent of the change,” he conceded. “For 20 years, he had been linked to the Mercedes world.
“For him, everything was different: culture, methods, software, components, people. And if you’re not always at the top in every area, you leave tenths on the table.
“The difference between fifth and 15th place this year was minimal.”
Hamilton will surely be glad of the admission from Vasseur, having said himself earlier in the season that he too had failed to realised the extent of the changes he had to face.
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