{"id":561300,"date":"2026-03-24T14:49:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/561300\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T14:49:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:49:12","slug":"lewis-hamilton-reveals-christmas-day-decision-amid-strong-start-to-f1-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/561300\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton reveals \u2018Christmas Day\u2019 decision amid strong start to F1 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lewis Hamilton<\/a> has revealed his pre-season training block was the \u201cmost intense he\u2019s ever had\u201d as he looks to re-find his form after a poor debut season with Ferrari<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hamilton failed to secure a podium in his inaugural Scuderia campaign, marking the first time in 19 seasons he failed to register a top-three finish.<\/p>\n

Yet the start of the 2026 season has seen Hamilton show signs of renewed vigour, impressing off the start-line and competing for front-running positions against the Mercedes pairing of George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, as well as Charles Leclerc.<\/p>\n

At the last round in China<\/a>, Hamilton picked up his first podium in red<\/a> with a third-place finish and ahead of this weekend\u2019s Japanese Grand Prix<\/a>, the seven-time F1<\/a> world champion divulged his pre-season preparations and a firm decision he made on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n

“Training this winter has been the heaviest and the most intense that I’ve ever had, and that probably comes hand in hand with being older, said the 41-year-old. “It takes longer to recover.<\/p>\n

“But I’ve managed to pull these new tools together. I’ve got a great trainer that I’ve been working with in the past, but we worked together since Christmas Day.<\/p>\n

“Then the time at the factory, obviously new engineer, and that’s obviously been a real good boost as well. Great morale within the team.<\/p>\n

“And as I said, I just decided on Christmas Day how I was going to start this season. I decided what I was going to do mentally and I’m going to continue to tweak that.”<\/p>\n

Hamilton is working with Carlo Santi as his temporary race engineer, having dispensed with Riccardo Adami. Cedric Michel-Grosjean is expected to fill the role permanently in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

\"Lewis<\/p>\n

Lewis Hamilton picked up his first podium for Ferrari last time out (Getty)<\/p>\n

Hamilton added after China: “I definitely feel like I’m back to my best, both mentally and physically.<\/p>\n

“I still think there’s room to improve. “I think I can still eke out more performance from this car. I’m still learning about it as I go, particularly with [energy] deployment.<\/p>\n

“I do think there’s more to come.”<\/p>\n

Hamilton is a five-time winner of the Japanese Grand Prix and is still eyeing his first grand prix victory for Ferrari. The Scuderia have not claimed a win since October 2024 with former driver Carlos Sainz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton has revealed his pre-season training block was the \u201cmost intense he\u2019s ever had\u201d as he looks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,13275,189703,817,826,813,816,3875,16406,10115,823,276809,85],"class_list":["post-561300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-christmas-day","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-george-russell","tag-japanese-grand-prix","tag-kimi-antonelli","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-poor-debut-season","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561300","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=561300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}