🇳🇱 F1'25, R15: Space mountain

This isn’t a troll on socials from some firstname bunchonumbers, spouting off ill-informed sporting analysis to an audience of 15 followers. This is seven-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton talking about himself after Hungary, sounding for all the world like a man who needed a summer break.

He meandered around the circuit and finished 12th at a track that has traditionally been so positive for him. The Hungaroring is Hamilton’s second most lucrative track, bringing him 286 points - only Silverstone has returned more. As a fun side note, it was also the venue where in 2021 he lined up as the only driver on the grid, with everyone else going in to change their tyres.

Hamilton seemed in a positive mood after summer shutdown, ready to attack the second part of the season, starting at one of the few current venues that he has never won at, blasting around the Dutch dunes.

A misjudgement on the Zandvoort carousel aka Hugenholtzbocht put paid to that, crashing out of the race. It has been 25 races since Hamilton won, and other than the sprints in Shanghai and Miami, has yet to step on the podium in his new colours. 

It’s difficult to see what is going wrong for Hamilton, but 109 points is obviously not where he aspires to be after 15 Grand Prix weekends. If you take Hamilton’s six titles for Mercedes, under the current points system, 109 points was about 5-8 races work for him. 

Obviously, this was planned to be a holding year for Hamilton. A year to settle into a new team, learn a bit of Italian, teach Ferrari the wisdom that only the best driver of his era can give and get everything lined up for 2026 and beyond for one last record-breaking run and achieving something no driver has managed with a team that has always been part of this world championship.

For all we know, he’s doing just that and 2026’s shake up brings with it the latest lease of life in a career that has previously been defined by domination, but 2025 is turning into a season to forget for Hamilton, or at least one that will be seen as the setback before a record-breaking comeback.

Turn 3 in the Netherlands was also the scene for more Ferrari happiness later in the Grand Prix as Kimi Antonelli tried the lower line through the banking and clattered into Charles Leclerc as a result. The image of Leclerc, who did not want to pit, sitting in the sand after will probably end up being the cover art for an episode of Drive to Survive this year.

Balancing two drivers who keep winning is a unique challenge, and McLaren are handling it well. Balancing a team where you’re not expecting to score every week is about maximising every moment of joy, as the Racing Bulls showed through Isack Hadjar’s controlled display. Ferrari’s challenge is the worst of all worlds. How to balance two superstars who have won, and expect to do well… when they don’t? Leclerc to me was an outside shot for a move to a new team, but that doesn’t seem to be happening, despite his public unhappiness with Ferrari.

Hamilton isn’t going to move and will be in the sport’s hottest seat for at least one more year, but seems to display his self-doubt in public more than he used to. In some ways, this isn’t a bad thing - after all, Lando Norris is incredibly honest with his emotions and the sport has changed significantly since the “never explain, never complain” days when drivers - safely stuck behind their visors - were not seen or heard (with a few exceptions).

So what next for Hamilton and Ferrari? He hasn’t actually had a podium at the Temple of Speed since pre-pandemic times and has hovered around fifth and sixth in the last five years (and his collision with Verstappen in 2021), so Monza might not be the best place to assess where he is, even if there are 120,000 fans cheering every movement of the steering wheel on race day.

So if not Italy, then how do we talk about Hamilton’s 2025? His Silverstone win last year was a highlight at a circuit where he’s made a career out of the extraordinary. Sao Paulo 2021 cemented him even further in the hearts of a country where he holds honorary citizenship. But Round 21 will be too late to give a report card in a sport that has held a Round 21 only six times before.

Hamilton needs a statement result in Ferrari red before 2026, and that statement cannot be “I’m absolutely useless”. That statement needs to be more than “we are checking” from his team and it needs to be more than “maybe next year is our year” from Ferrari fans. 

The team hasn’t won a drivers’ title since 2007 - Hamilton’s debut year - and there is so much…everything that awaits title number eight. He’d be the third British driver to win the title with Ferrari (Mike Hawthorn and John Surtees), he’d match Juan Manuel Fangio and become the second driver to win the title with more than two teams (Fangio won it with Ferrari in 1956), he’d win number eight, surpassing Michael Schumacher, who won five championships with Ferrari, and he’d win with the same team that his mentor Niki Lauda did in 1975 and 1977. 

History awaits number eight. But in the present, Hamilton is hoping to rediscover the magic that he could summon at will in years gone by just to get back to the top step of the podium.

It feels good to have F1 back, right? Monza, Ferrari’s home track, is the backdrop for the reaction to this disastrous race weekend. Seeing Italian fans in force is a proper state of the union for European F1 fans, and despite the unhappiness, Ferrari are still second in the Teams’ championship. With McLaren way way out of sight, Ferrari need to defend from Mercedes and Red Bull, with both teams outgaining them in The Netherlands. A similar result in Italy would put Ferrari on the front pages and not in the way the team would like.

Thanks for reading, as always.