Lewis Hamilton reflects on his place in his new Scuderia Ferrari team after a weekend off following a triple-header. Heading into round six of the 2025 season, the eight-time world champion is looking to extract the most out of the SF-25 in Miami.
Hamilton on the support he has received from Ferrari, spending time in Maranello
Ferrari’s headquarters are located in Maranello, Italy. Although Hamilton is not living in Italy currently, he is spending more time at the Ferrari factory headquarters, in his continued efforts to come to terms with his new team.
In a press conference on Thursday, Hamilton shared that he hopes to spend more time in Italy through the season and work on his Italian.
“I really am enjoying it. Not living in Italy currently, but spending more time is still something I really want to try and figure out how to do through the year. My Italian is not really progressing, so I’ve probably got to throw myself more into the thick of it.”
The Tifosi have shown massive support for Hamilton since news of his move to Ferrari dropped last year. Hamilton shed light on the amount of support he has received from his team thus far, showing his gratitude for their hard work.
“The team’s been well. Lots of changes, a huge amount of work has been going on from my first days there to adjust certain things, for example in the sim, and everyone’s been really responsive and massively supportive. So I’ve really appreciated it.”
Hamilton and the Ferrari team spent their week-long break between races well, logging hours in the sim and making improvements.
“Yep, spent some good time in Italy. We went through a lot, did some good sim running. There are things that we’ve made adjustments to. We’ll see how they work this weekend.”
Chinese Sprint Race victory raises questions about setup ahead of second Sprint weekend
Hamilton won the previous Sprint Race in Shanghai, after securing pole in Sprint Race Qualifying. Since that outing, Hamilton has been fighting for points every race, rather than podiums like teammate Charles Leclerc.
The British driver was asked about his commanding pace in the Sprint compared to his slight struggle for results since China. Hamilton attributes this to the number of small changes the car undergoes during non-Sprint weekends. Whereas, Sprint weekends don’t allow for many tweaks from session to session.
“I can’t really explain it too much. In the Sprint race there’s not a huge amount of changes you make. I think the one thing to take from it is that we didn’t make a lot of changes – if any – going from P1 to quali, whereas on all the other weekends we’ve been tinkering with the car and making it worse.”
In his adjustment to the Ferrari, Hamilton has to unlearn 12 seasons of Mercedes muscle memory. This conscious recognition of what works and what doesn’t adds to the mental load of the driver in competitive sessions.
Hamilton was asked if he is able to drive the car instinctively or make a conscious effort in the car.
“You’re generally always a mixture of the two, but I’m definitely working hard to adjust to this one for sure.”
The driver stated that there’s no way to know when asked how the Miami GP will go for the team. He added that he is aiming to pull out maximum performance from the car, like teammate Charles Leclerc in Sakhir.
“We’ll do the best we can. We’ve not got upgrades or anything this weekend, but we continue to try and optimise the car. Obviously, Charles 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.”
