Lewis Hamilton has outlined what has caused a lackluster race pace and looked to teammate Charles Leclerc’s third-place podium finish in Saudi Arabia as the benchmark for Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix.
There were “many things, lots of different things, there’s not one in particular” that caused a less-than-spectacular seventh-place result in the last race, Hamilton said during a pre-race weekend press conference.
When asked for specifics, he reflected on his time at Mercedes and the transition phase.
“When I joined Mercedes, the first six months were tough getting attuned to working with new people,” Hamilton said. “Obviously, the engineers that I’m working with now are used to setting up the car for a different driver and a different driving style. And I’m used to driving a car with a different driving style, and so it’s a combination of a bunch of different things.”
Hamilton announced in February of last year that he was leaving Mercedes after 12 seasons and making the move to Ferrari to start a new career chapter. Ahead of the 2025 season, there were high hopes for Ferrari and the Hamilton-Leclerc pairing was deemed the strongest on the grid.
But the transition hasn’t always been a smooth one. The seven-time Formula 1 World Drivers Champion started the season opener in Melbourne by crossing the checkered flag in 10th. And what began as a dream weekend at the Chinese Grand Prix — securing his first win in a Ferrari during the Saturday sprint race, ended in a double-disqualification for the team come Sunday.
The British driver is slowly becoming more comfortable in the new car, with two seventh-place finishes and one top-five performance since.
Ahead of the sixth race in the 2025 season, the team sits in fourth in the constructor standings ahead of Williams. Leclerc leads Hamilton in the driver standings by 16 points.
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The 40-year-old came to Ferrari with nearly two decades of experience in the sport but is looking at Leclerc, his 27-year-old teammate, as the benchmark.
As for expectations this weekend in South Florida, Hamilton said he has “no clue, we’ll do the best we can”. Hamilton finished sixth around the 19-corner Miami street circuit, nicknamed “F1’s Super Bowl,” the past three years.
“We’ve not got upgrades or anything this weekend, but we continue to try to optimize the car,” Hamilton said. “Obviously Charles [Leclerc] in the last race did a fantastic job and showed what the car can do in a race. So the goal is to try to replicate that.”
Leclerc, who finished on the podium in Saudi Arabia just ahead of Lando Norris’ papaya-orange McLaren while Hamilton strayed 4.3 seconds behind Kimi Antonelli’s pace, said on Thursday that he has also been “driving quite differently this year, just because this car requires a different setup and a different way of driving”.
“We’ve done lots of work in the simulator in order to be in the right window,” Leclerc said. “If we manage to do that better than others, then there’s definitely the opportunity for us to reproduce what happened in China more than in a normal race weekend where I would say it’s a bit more difficult.”
The eight-time race winner explained that the Italian team has gone down an “extreme” path this year when it comes to car development: “On my side, this year we’ve gone in quite extreme directions in terms of setup in order to extract a bit more out of the car. So I feel like I’m changing quite a lot of my driving style in order to fit the new requirements from this car.”
However, he was hesitant at any comparison to Hamilton, saying “It’s always very, very difficult” to compare two drivers’ feelings about the car.
“It’s been seven years that I’ve been with Ferrari, so there are most likely things that are also very natural to me now, after so many years with the team that I don’t even realize,” Leclerc added.
Hamilton said the car, just like any other, requires a mix of instinctive and conscious driving. The comments came after Hamilton said he needed “a brain transplant” after being asked what he needs to work with the car post-qualifying in Jeddah.
“But I’m definitely working hard to adjust to this one,” he said in Thursday’s media session.
