Hamilton and Ferrari - F1’s greatest love story is a train wreck

Lewis Hamilton’s move to Ferrari was thought to be the match made in revhead heaven. Formula One’s greatest star in cahoots with the most famous team. It’s a train wreck.

Happier times when Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari’s team principal Frederic Vasseur, unveiled the car for the 2025 season in February Picture: Getty Images

I crossed paths with Lewis Hamilton at the Australian Grand Prix.

Me: “Morning!”

Hamilton: “Correct!”

And off he went on his scooter, fine and dandy, slaloming through the well-heeled folks in the paddock at Albert Park, whistling before he worked with his new race engineer Riccardo Adami, swinging left and disappearing into the Ferrari garage, the biggest Italian romance since Romeo and Juliet, bursting with optimism, looking a million bucks in head-to-toe red, expecting with every fibre of his heart and swanky threads to contend for the Formula One drivers’ championship.

Now?

He’s gloomy.

Slow.

Making up the numbers.

Mourning!

Correct!

Lewis Hamilton regularly travels around pit lane on a scooter Picture: AP

Hamilton’s move to the Prancing Horse was thought to be a match made in revhead heaven. F1’s greatest and most marketable star in cahoots with the most ­famous team. It’s become a train wreck. Everything that could go wrong has multiplied, super-sized, metastasised and gone even worse. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” was Hamilton’s cute line about needing time to gel with Ferrari after 12 years with Mercedes but two months later, the team uniform isn’t half as red as everyone’s faces. Red with frustration, red with impatience, red with disbelief. Hamilton’s results wouldn’t have been much worse in a rusty old Holden ute.

“Man,” he moaned into his team radio during the Miami Grand Prix. “You guys.”

You guys are the worst, you guys are clueless, you guys couldn’t run a chook raffle let alone a decent race plan. It’s not me, it’s you. That was Hamilton’s dismissive tone. He told Ferrari boss Fred Vasseu to “calm down”. He complained of “burning up his tyres” while ordered to stay behind teammate Charles Leclerc, adding: “Do you want me to just sit here the whole race?” He complained of “not good teamwork.” When Adami delayed giving instructions, Hamilton said, “Have a tea break while you’re at it.”

After being ordered to allow Leclerc through, Hamilton was told Williams’ Carlos Sainz was behind him. Hamilton snapped: “Do you want me to let him pass as well?”

Lewis Hamilton at the Met Gala last week Picture: Getty Images

Train wreck?

Correct!

Hamilton thought he could win an eighth world championship this year. Buckley’s.

Ferrari reckoned the dream team of Hamilton and Leclerc would combine for the constructors’ championship. Slim and none.

Hamilton and Adami have been bickering since day one at the Australian GP, when the 40-year-old Englishman told Adami to put a sock in it. “Leave me to it!” Hamilton barked. “Please! Just leave it!”

Then Hamilton swore like a trucker (and might as well have been driving an 18-wheeler) before saying: “Sorry. Didn’t realise my radio was on.”

Hamilton laboured to eighth at Miami. He was more than a minute behind McLaren’s Oscar ­Piastri. He’s seventh in the championship race, trailing the likes of Leclerc, Williams’ Alex Albon and even Kimi Antonelli, the Italian teenager supposedly doing work experience in Hamilton’s old seat at Mercedes. Ferrari’s a million miles and points behind McLaren on the team standings. Rome was built in 870 years, an allotment of time unlikely to be at Hamilton’s disposal.

The Prancing Horse is searching high and low for a hole to crawl into before next week’s first home race of the season in Italy. If we were penning a form guide for Ferrari at the Emilia-Romagna GP, we’d politely suggest a consideration of others. There’s more entertainment in the terse radio interactions than the team’s lacklustre results. La vita ain’t bella.

Lewis Hamilton during the sprint race at last week’s Miami Grand Prix. The Ferrari driver has openley argued with his engineer and team principal Picture: Getty Images

“I mean, it was all PG (Parental Guidance), at least, right?” Hamilton said of venting his frustrations with Ferrari at Miami. “For sure, I don’t know what you’re going to write, whether I was disrespectful or whatever. Honestly, I didn’t feel it was. I was just like, ‘Come on, guys. I just want to win.’ I’ve still got that fire in my belly. I can feel a little bit of it really coming out. I’m not going to apologise for being a fighter. I’m not going to apologise for still wanting it. And I know everyone in the team does, too.”

Vasseur shut the doors and had a heart-to-heart with Hamilton and Leclerc in the rather surreal location of Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium. “In this situation, Lewis has to understand my feeling on the pit wall,” Vasseur said. “He can trust me. I can trust him. The same with Charles. When I’m making a decision for Ferrari with live elements – it’s not that you have 30 minutes to look at the data and so on. You have to decide who is the fastest on track … I’m perhaps a bit slow. It took me one lap or one lap and a half to make a decision.”

Everyone’s waiting for Hamilton to hit his stride. Perhaps we should have a tea break while we’re at it. Sir Lewis has given up on catching McLaren’s Piastri and Lando Norris. He’s making up the numbers further down the grid, hoping to merely draw alongside Red Bull’s Verstappen and the Mercedes duo of George Russell and Antonelli. “I truly believe that when we fix some of the problems we have with the car, we’ll be back in the fight with the Mercedes, with the Bulls,” Hamilton said. “It just can’t come quicker. We’ll try something different in the next race. We’ll keep working on our processes. I look forward to the time when maybe I can fight for a podium. That would be nice.” Seven-time world champions can’t get no satisfaction from maybe sneaking onto the podium. Going radio goo-goo, and then radio gaga, with Adami is a far cry from the ebullience of hopefulness of his Ferrari debut in Melbourne.

Lewis Hamilton has not achieved the resultes he did with Mercedes Picture: AP

“I know what I bring,” he beamed not long after hopping off his scooter at Albert Park. “I know what I can deliver. I know what it’s going to take to do it. This is the most exciting period of my life. Joining a new team … a foundation needs to be built and that’s what I’ll be doing, building trust with every single person in the team.”

Foundations are shaky. Trust seems elusive. Romeo and Juliet can’t make it work. Whether the fault of the team or individual, these star-crossed lovers, Hamilton’s not doing much of a job at his Italian job. His most impressive outing this year has been at the Met Gala in New York, wearing sharp threads and a fine mood. Now, my fashion knowledge is limited to boardshorts and T-shirts, so I’ll relay the following description of Hamilton’s attire: “He put on a dapper display in a sharp white double-breasted suit and a matching beret … adorned with eye-catching boucle detailing and gold embellishment … and a number of chunky rings and pair of diamond stud earrings.”

Lewis Hamilton during his first race for Ferrari at the Australian Grand Prix in March Picture: AFP

It takes a certain kind of confident man to pull off a white double-breasted suit and matching beret. Hamilton is that man. “I’m deeply grateful to … everyone who continues to honour the legacy of the Black Dandy,” he wrote on Instagram before leaving New York for a less hospitable reception at Imola. “We’ve always been here. We’ve always been fly. And now, we’re seen. This look has taken months of research and development. Every detail has been deeply considered – there’s a lot of emotion and meaning woven into this. This is more than a suit, this is ancestral history. Stylish, spiritual, and sharp.”

The fashion business is serious business for Hamilton, but his primary business is the racing business, in which his performances haven’t been remotely stylish, sharp or dandy. Ferrari’s fans are famously prickly about underachievement from overpaid superstars – he’s on $1.7 million a year – and Italy’s largest newspaper, La Gazetta, has already given Hamilton a bleak welcome to his first race on the Scuderia’s home soil.

“Hamilton-Ferrari, a luxury marriage that risks turning into a crisis,’ La Gazetta wrote ahead of Sunday’s Emilia-Romagna GP. “There are already deep cracks showing. Bringing in a driver of Hamilton’s calibre means managing enormous expectations, both from him and from the fans.

“If these expectations are not met, the backlash can be devastating. Will Imola be an epochal failure or the start of a legendary comeback?”