Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari stint went from bad to worse at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, where he became the first Ferrari driver to qualify last on pure pace since Giancarlo Fisichella at Abu Dhabi 2009.
Think he regrets his move to Maranello right now? Just wait until next season when a dominant Mercedes could deliver the final insult…
Lewis Hamilton should have been more honest with himself at Ferrari
Should Lewis Hamilton be regretting his move to Ferrari right now?
It’s a difficult question to answer.
To describe it as a mistake would be to dismiss the very good reasons he had to walk away from Mercedes at the time he did.
At its core this move was all about finally escaping the ghosts of Abu Dhabi 2021, detaching himself from the crushing underachievement of the final years of his Mercedes tenure, breathing different air and completely changing the tone of the tail end of his career.
It was about a search for fulfilment – completion – and being unable to walk away from F1 without first having a taste of life inside the sport’s most sacred team.
Like him or not – and there are many who don’t – there was something irresistibly life affirming about an elite athlete towards the end of his career following his heart and finally turning a long-held ambition into reality.
It has not worked out as he hoped, of course, mostly because of the great irony that the main problem he encountered at Mercedes – a badly born, fundamentally flawed car with its biggest weakness baked in for the season – is identical to the one he has found at Ferrari.
Little wonder, then, that it at least looks as though the problem lies entirely with him.
How could it not when the exact same issues have followed him from team to team, from car to car?
Put simply, there were a variety of reasons – not all related to competitiveness – behind Hamilton’s decision to sign on the dotted line with Ferrari in the winter of 2023/24.
To judge it purely through the prism of results on track – even if that, of course, should always be considered the ultimate metric – is to overlook his motive for becoming a Ferrari driver.
So, no, perhaps there will be no regrets from that perspective.
But from a competition standpoint? And his stated desire to get that elusive eighth title?
Then it gets complicated.
Looking for a way out of Mercedes in response to two consecutive winless seasons in 2022/23 seems more than a touch hasty – an emotional spasm of a decision – now that 2026, and the promise offered by the new regulations, is on the horizon.
Who knows? Ferrari might just ace the new rules from the start of next season. Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps.
But it seems quite certain that Mercedes will with rumours persisting for some time that the team’s preparations for 2026 are more advanced than most.
More than once this season Hamilton has spoken of his determination to end his Ferrari career on a happy note and his “refusal” to follow in the footsteps of Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel, established champions who failed to win the title with Ferrari.
The difference on this occasion is that at least Fernando and Seb started well at Ferrari.
Alonso and Ferrari were a united force right up until Fernando lost the title at Abu Dhabi in 2010, after which he could never quite bring himself to forgive and forget.
Vettel, meanwhile, was doomed almost from the beginning after finding that the management team that originally signed him had been replaced by the time he arrived.
Yet his three wins in 2015 made for a happy enough start before the relationship between team and driver never quite recovered after serious reservations – on both sides – developed during a difficult second season in 2016.
Hamilton’s Ferrari experience, in contrast, has been nothing but misery from the moment the SF-25 was launched in February, resulting in him reaching breaking point in record time.
That they already seem thoroughly fed up of each other even before the end of his first season does not suggest that this situation is salvageable.
Maybe the real mistake Hamilton made was refusing to accept, as he neared his 40th birthday, that his only shot at an eighth world championship came and went in the concocted drama of Abu Dhabi 2021.
If only he had been more honest with himself – acknowledged that he was getting old and merely wanted “a blast in the red car and then sayonara”, as Mark Webber famously said of Vettel in 2014 – rather than hanging everything on another championship, his current predicament would have been easier to take for all concerned.
The worst-case scenario for him now?
Watching the car he walked away from, the car that could so easily have been his, storming to the title in George Russell’s hands next season.
Now that would be the final insult.
Think Hamilton regrets his Ferrari move now?
Just wait until 2026.
Reader reaction: Lewis Hamilton keeps disappointing at Ferrari
Motismot: Hamilton would lose to any teammate on the grid this year except perhaps Stroll who could conceivably come 2nd in the ’26 championship.
jnc: The M-B 2/3 in Vegas was a massive blow to Ferrari’s Constructor’s hopes. Blood must be coming out of Elkann’s ears.
Jeff Koons: It’s only Hamilton. He forgot Ferrari has been this way since 2007. But I guess he blocked that as well.
Must have been the rose tinted glasses from his childhood days. Probably too rose tinted confusing his McLaren Senna poster above his bed with a Ferrari poster
