{"id":367140,"date":"2025-12-23T17:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T17:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/367140\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T17:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T17:50:07","slug":"has-max-verstappen-pinpointed-the-reason-for-lewis-hamiltons-ferrari-struggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/367140\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Max Verstappen pinpointed the reason for Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari struggles?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Losing to Charles Leclerc in every stat that matters, Max Verstappen has put Lewis Hamilton\u2019s struggles down to leaving his \u201csecond family\u201d at Mercedes and not feeling \u201csecure or comfortable\u201d at Ferrari.<\/p>\n

Last year, Hamilton shocked the world of motorsport when he announced he would be leaving Mercedes after 12 years with the Silver Arrows to join Ferrari.<\/p>\n

Max Verstappen believes \u201cthat\u201d had an impact on Lewis Hamilton<\/p>\n

It was billed as a blockbuster move, the sport\u2019s most successful driver joining the iconic Ferrari Formula 1 team with the dream of winning a record-breaking eighth World title. <\/p>\n

The blockbuster failed to live up to its billing.<\/p>\n

Although Hamilton<\/a> won the Chinese Grand Prix Sprint from pole, that was his sole highlight in a season that didn\u2019t include a single Grand Prix podium.<\/p>\n

The 40-year-old lost his qualifying head-to-head against his teammate Charles Leclerc by 5 to 19 and lagged behind the Monegasque driver 3 to 18 in the grands prix, both drivers were disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix after their SF-25s failed post-race inspection.<\/p>\n

It led to a season of terse exchanges with his race engineer Riccardo Adami, while off the track, Hamilton sent documents to Ferrari<\/a>, proposing a series of changes to the car and the team.<\/p>\n

Hamilton went on to finish his debut campaign in red in sixth place in the Drivers\u2019 standings, one position behind Leclerc, but 86 points down on his teammate.<\/p>\n

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc: Ferrari 2025 head-to-head scores<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n

His form this season, and in his final years at Mercedes, has led to debate about whether age has caught up with Hamilton or if the ground-effect cars of the last four years are just not suited to his driving style.<\/p>\n

Verstappen, though, believes, at least for F1 2025, there was another dynamic in play \u2013 Hamilton leaving Mercedes after 12 years with the Brackley squad to join Ferrari.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t feel secure or comfortable within the team dynamic you cannot be yourself and that has an impact,\u201d the four-time World Champion told Press Association.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou leave a team that has been your second family in Mercedes and you have built up such a career with them. <\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone benefitted off that, Mercedes and Lewis and then going in a completely different route is not easy, plus you are going up against a guy that has been there for a while. It is very tough.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd age is not on your side. You are not going to become faster at that age, not necessarily slower, but definitely not faster, whereas Charles is still getting better so that is also not helping him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ferrari \u2018underestimated\u2019 Hamilton challenge changing teams<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a theory that Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur agrees with.<\/p>\n

The Frenchman, speaking during Ferrari\u2019s end-of-season press briefing, admitted that everyone probably \u201cunderestimated\u201d the huge changes that Hamilton would have to adjust to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was difficult for Lewis, and it\u2019s a small word, probably, that it was difficult,\u201d Vasseur said as per Racingnews365.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause after 20 years with Mercedes \u2014 I say 20 years, because for me, McLaren was McLaren-Mercedes and then Mercedes \u2014 it was a huge change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI personally underestimated the step. It\u2019s not that we are doing things worse or better. It\u2019s that we are just doing things differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just about the food or the weather; it\u2019s that every single software is different, every single component is different. The people around him were different.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if you are not on top of everything, you leave on the table a couple of hundredths of a second, and today, with the field that we had \u2014 I think it was Abu Dhabi that Q2 that you had one tenth between P5 and P15 \u2014 it means that we were not in full control of every single detail of the package.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we lost, a little bit, parts of the season like this, and sometimes for less than one tenth of a second.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have in mind Budapest, when Charles, in Q2, was one-tenth faster than Lewis. Lewis was P11, and at the end, Charles finished with the pole position.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Frenchman added: \u201cIt\u2019s not an excuse, it\u2019s not a good reason.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to be in front of everybody, but at the end of the day, we are speaking about details.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think perhaps\u2026 We underestimated, for sure, the change of culture, the change of people around him, the change of everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd even if we came back at a decent pace, I\u2019m not speaking about classification, I\u2019m speaking about collaboration and understanding of the car in the last part of the season, I think it was tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read next: Lewis Hamilton overruled Ron Dennis in hilarious \u2018Top Gear\u2019 stand-off<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Losing to Charles Leclerc in every stat that matters, Max Verstappen has put Lewis Hamilton\u2019s struggles down to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,818,823,825,44,85],"class_list":["post-367140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-home-page","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}