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Lewis Hamilton believes Ferrari has built the internal foundation required to mount a stronger challenge to Mercedes during the second half of the Formula 1 season. The seven-time champion says his priority now is to “galvanise the troops” at Maranello as the team attempts to close a significant gap in both championships.
Hamilton is Ferrari’s best-placed driver to attack world championship leader Kimi Antonelli. He trails the Mercedes driver by 50 points, while Ferrari sits 72 points behind Mercedes in the constructors’ standings.
The gap remains substantial, but Ferrari has enjoyed better reliability than its rival during the opening half of the season. Mercedes has been affected by power unit reliability problems, giving Ferrari an important platform from which to build its title challenge.
Ferrari’s pursuit of a long-awaited championship comes against a difficult historical backdrop outlined in the team’s current position: it has not won a world title since taking the 2008 constructors’ crown. Kimi Raikkonen remains Ferrari’s last drivers’ champion, having secured the title in 2007.
Hamilton, however, sees a more unified operation emerging around him. He described the first part of the season as positive, while acknowledging that Ferrari’s results and progress could still have been better.
“It has been a great first part of the season; it’s good, but of course, it could be better,” Hamilton told media.
He said the relationship between his personal team and Ferrari’s racing operation had reached its strongest point yet, after a year spent building familiarity and a common direction.
“It’s taken us a good year to get to know each other, and we’re more aligned than ever, and I think it is a really good foundation for us to build on moving forward,” he said.
Hamilton stressed that Ferrari still has considerable work to complete. For him, the challenge is not simply extracting more from the car, but focusing the collective energy of an organisation whose commitment is already unmistakable.
“There is still a huge amount of work to do, and improvements we need to make in terms of, like, galvanising the troops, who are all so passionate,” Hamilton said.
He added that he had never seen such love and passion for a team at its factory. The task, he believes, is to direct that commitment in the right direction as Ferrari tries to turn its stronger internal harmony and reliability record into a sustained title assault.
He’s a software engineer with a deep passion for Formula 1 and motorsport. He co-founded Formula Live Pulse to make live telemetry and race insights accessible, visual, and easy to follow.