“I have always believed that if you dream big enough and work hard enough, anything is possible.” – Lewis Hamilton
A Year In. The Verdict Begins.
When Lewis Hamilton announced he was leaving Mercedes for Ferrari in February 2024, the reaction was somewhere between disbelief and euphoria depending on which side of the argument you stood on.
For the romantics, it was the move the sport had always deserved. The greatest driver of his generation, in the most iconic car in the sport’s history, with everything still to play for and nothing left to prove anywhere else. For the sceptics, it was a gamble dressed up as destiny, a driver in the final chapter of his career leaving the team that had defined his success for one that had spent years promising more than it delivered.
One year on, both arguments still have merit. That, in itself, tells you something about where Hamilton and Ferrari actually are.
What the Move Was Always About
Hamilton’s decision to leave Mercedes was not made in a moment of frustration or impulse. It was the product of a man who had won everything there was to win at one team and had arrived at a conclusion that the only remaining challenge worth pursuing was the one nobody had managed to give him yet.
A world championship with Ferrari.
Seven titles, 103 race wins, every record that mattered and yet the one thing missing from Hamilton’s career was the title that Schumacher won five times in a row between 2000 and 2004. Ferrari represents something in Formula 1 that no other team can replicate, a history, an identity, a weight of expectation that transforms winning from an achievement into something closer to destiny fulfilled.
He wanted that. He wanted to be the man who brought Ferrari back to the top of the sport. Whether that ambition was realistic was always the question and it remains the question now.
The First Season in Red
The 2025 season at Ferrari was not the fairytale that the romantics had scripted.
Hamilton arrived at a team in transition, with new leadership under Frederic Vasseur, a car that showed genuine pace in some conditions and frustrating inconsistency in others and a teammate in Charles Leclerc who had no intention of making the adjustment easy. Leclerc is one of the fastest drivers on the grid and Ferrari is his team in a way that it has not yet become Hamilton’s and that dynamic played out across the season in ways that were sometimes productive and sometimes uncomfortable.
There were moments that justified the move. Performances in qualifying that reminded everyone why Hamilton’s speed has never been in question. Race craft in the closing stages of grands prix that produced results the car alone did not deserve. The relationship with the Ferrari engineers, which took time to build but developed through the season into something that both sides described as genuinely positive.
There were also moments that raised the questions again. Results that fell short of what the machinery suggested was possible. A championship that was competitive but not quite competitive enough in the moments that mattered. The sense, never quite stated explicitly but present in the paddock’s conversation, that the partnership was finding its feet rather than hitting its peak.
The Leclerc Dynamic
The relationship between Hamilton and Leclerc is the subplot that defines everything else at Ferrari.
Both are race winners, both are capable of leading a championship challenge and both arrived at 2025 with reasons to believe that this was their moment. Hamilton brought the experience, the racecraft and the weight of everything he had already achieved. Leclerc brought the home crowd, the team’s institutional loyalty and a raw pace that had been evident since his first season in red.
They have coexisted without the open warfare that characterised the Senna-Prost partnership at McLaren, which is itself an achievement given what is at stake. But coexistence is not the same as harmony and the moments where their interests diverged produced exactly the kind of tension that Ferrari’s history suggests is never far below the surface.
How that dynamic develops in 2026, in a regulation reset that gives both of them a fresh start, is one of the season’s most compelling questions.
2026 and the Real Test
If 2025 was the adjustment year, 2026 is where the verdict begins to form.
The new regulations have given Ferrari an opportunity that a stable regulatory environment would not have provided. A reset means that the accumulated knowledge and development advantage that certain teams had built under the previous rules is partially erased and teams that have invested heavily in understanding the new formula can close gaps that would otherwise have taken years to close.
Ferrari have the resources and the motivation – Hamilton has the experience of navigating regulation changes, having been at Mercedes through the 2014 turbo hybrid transition that defined an era. The combination, in theory, gives them everything they need to compete at the front in 2026.
Whether theory translates into Sunday afternoons is the only question that matters in Formula 1 and the early 2026 results will begin to answer it with a clarity that the first year of adjustment could not provide.
Meanwhile, Mercedes have moved on too. George Russell’s win for Mercedes at Baku in 2026 is a reminder that the team Hamilton left hasn’t stood still. Watching his former car take victories while he’s still chasing his first Ferrari win adds a layer of pressure that the paddock hasn’t missed.
Dream Move or Career Gamble?
The honest answer, one year on, is that it is still both.
The dream is real. Hamilton at Ferrari is everything the sport’s romantic imagination suggested it would be, a figure of genuine historical significance in the car that carries the sport’s most significant history. When it works, when Hamilton is at the front in red, it produces something that feels like it was always meant to happen.
The gamble is also real – Ferrari remains a team with a complicated relationship between its ambitions and its execution, between what it promises and what it delivers. Hamilton has committed the final chapter of his career to a partnership that has not yet produced the championship that both parties came together to win.
The verdict is not in.
It will not be in until the championship is decided and the final calculation is made about whether the move gave Hamilton what he came for.
One year on, the question is still open. That is either the most compelling thing about it or the most concerning, depending entirely on your perspective.
The Engineers Behind the Scenes
One element that rarely gets enough attention in the Hamilton-Ferrari story is the human infrastructure around him. Building trust with a new set of race engineers, data analysts and strategists takes time. Hamilton spent over a decade developing shorthand with his Mercedes crew. Starting that process again at 39 isn’t just a sporting challenge, it’s a logistical one. The role of the race engineer in F1 is far more central to a driver’s performance than most fans appreciate and the 2025 season was as much about rebuilding those communication channels as it was about raw lap times.
By the end of 2025, the signs were that those channels were genuinely improving. Whether 2026 is the year they become seamless is the next chapter of this story.
What the Rest of the Grid Makes of It
Hamilton’s move didn’t just affect Ferrari. It reshuffled the entire grid’s dynamic. Mercedes brought in Kimi Antonelli, who took a win at Madrid in 2026, suggesting the Brackley team found a way to replace Hamilton faster than many expected. That result stung in a way that a quiet midfield finish never would. Ferrari and Hamilton needed the 2026 regulation reset to matter. Every race Mercedes wins without Hamilton makes the original decision look harder to defend in the short term.
Key Takeaways
- Hamilton announced his Ferrari move in February 2024, leaving Mercedes after a career-defining partnership that produced seven world titles and 103 race wins.
- The 2025 season was a transition year. Ferrari showed genuine pace in patches but couldn’t sustain championship-level consistency across the full calendar.
- Charles Leclerc remained the team’s institutional figurehead and the Hamilton-Leclerc dynamic was tense at times without ever becoming openly hostile.
- Hamilton’s experience of the 2014 regulation transition at Mercedes is seen as a key asset as Ferrari targets the 2026 reset.
- Mercedes, with Russell winning at Baku and Antonelli winning at Madrid in 2026, have shown they didn’t stand still after losing Hamilton.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many world titles and race wins did Hamilton have before joining Ferrari?
Hamilton arrived at Ferrari with seven world championships and 103 race wins. Those are the headline numbers, but the detail that matters most to the Ferrari move is what was missing: Michael Schumacher won five consecutive titles with Ferrari between 2000 and 2004 and that specific achievement is the one Hamilton has never been able to match at any team. The Ferrari move was built around chasing exactly that kind of legacy.
Who leads Ferrari alongside Hamilton and how has that relationship played out?
Charles Leclerc is Hamilton’s teammate at Ferrari. Leclerc brought institutional loyalty, raw pace evident since his first season in red and the home crowd’s support. Hamilton brought racecraft and championship experience. The two coexisted through 2025 without the open conflict that defined the Senna-Prost era at McLaren, but the moments where their interests diverged produced real tension. The 2026 regulation reset gives both drivers a fresh start and makes the internal dynamic one of the season’s most compelling storylines.
What role did Frederic Vasseur play in Hamilton’s first year at Ferrari?
Vasseur was leading Ferrari through a period of transition when Hamilton arrived. The team under Vasseur showed genuine pace in some conditions during 2025 but struggled with the inconsistency that has followed Ferrari for years. Hamilton’s relationship with the Ferrari engineers developed positively through the season, with both sides describing the communication as genuinely improving, though the results didn’t yet reflect a partnership at full strength.
How has Mercedes performed since Hamilton left?
Mercedes haven’t collapsed without Hamilton. George Russell won for the team at Baku in 2026 and Kimi Antonelli, the driver brought in to replace Hamilton, won at the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid in 2026. Those results demonstrate that Mercedes rebuilt quickly. For Hamilton and Ferrari, every Mercedes victory in 2026 adds pressure to deliver results from the regulation reset that both parties entered the partnership to achieve.
