Lewis Hamilton has rued the changes that inspired Ferrari’s best qualifying of 2025 at the Mexico City Grand Prix not being implemented earlier in the Formula 1 season.
Hamilton claimed his maiden top-three Grand Prix start in red at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez as he took third place behind team-mate Charles Leclerc in second.
Having endured a tough debut campaign with the team, Hamilton has never shied away from vocal criticism of Ferrari’s shortcomings, demanding changes to processes.
The Italian marque acted on Hamilton’s stinging criticism in Singapore, which unlocked gains over one lap last weekend in Austin, and that trend has continued in Mexico.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been up here”, he told media including Motorsport Week, “so it feels fresh.
“Really grateful to the team for all the hard work and just the constant effort through the year.
“Of course, I wish we had this experience earlier on in the year. But the fact is that we’re continuing to improve and continuing to stay positive.
“So it’s great to be up here with these two.”
The key to Ferrari’s performance turnaround
Hamilton admitted he was pleased with the work he did with his engineering team to get his SF-25 into a good window, having missed the opening practice session.
“Relatively happy,” he surmised. “I think, as Charles said, it is a really, really difficult circuit.
“We’re all sliding around in general. So the grip is quite low at this circuit for the altitude that we’re in.
“But even with that, clearly everyone’s experiencing the same thing. And our pace has been great all weekend.
“I think we’ve made good steps with the car through the weekend.
“Obviously, I missed P1, which I wouldn’t say hasn’t hampered the weekend. But of course, you learn more with more laps on the track.
“And I think I got the car to as good a place as I could. It’s definitely not easy to put a lap together. But yeah, I’m just happy to be here.”
Expanding on the changes that made his qualifying performance possible, Hamilton reiterated that Ferrari has heeded his advice when evolving the team’s approach.
“Well, we continue to improve on our process,” he elaborated.
“And processes are, from the moment we arrive to our debriefs, to the decisions we make as a team within engineering, within when we’re going out, all these different things.
“So I think we’re just continuously tightening up on some of those areas.
“And I think just how Charles and I have worked together to move the car and develop the car forward, I think, has been really positive over the race weekends.
“Our cars are pretty much identical now, and I’m finally figuring out how to drive this car that Charles has been fortunate to drive for the past seven years in terms of the characteristics.
“But I’m finally feeling like I’m getting there, so it’s good.”
However, the seven-time F1 champion remains unsure whether Ferrari’s improvements behind the scenes will be as effective as it has been in Mexico at other tracks.
“I think this is a peculiar circuit, obviously with the altitude, so we perhaps are closer than we would normally be, I would say. It’s difficult to say where we’d be in the next races,” he said.
“I’m not sure we’ll be as close as we are, but I do think through those small improvements that Charles was talking about that we’ve made, make big differences.
“It feels great to finally get into Q3 and be able to deliver good laps and be competitive. That’s been a problem all year for us, and particularly on my side.”
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