Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari nightmare: assigning blame for 2025's disaster

Lewis Hamilton's move to Ferrari was supposed to be the final chapter of a legendary career—a seven-time World Champion uniting with motorsport's most iconic institution. Instead, 2025 became statistically the worst season of Hamilton's entire Formula 1 career, raising uncomfortable questions about blame, adaptation, and systemic failure at Maranello.

The numbers don't lie

The scale of Hamilton's struggles at Ferrari is almost incomprehensible when measured against his career trajectory. For the first time in his illustrious F1 career, Hamilton failed to record a single Grand Prix podium finish across an entire season. His only silverware came via a sprint victory in China—a high that evaporated within 24 hours when both Ferrari cars were disqualified from the grand prix itself.

Hamilton finished sixth in the Drivers' Championship with 156 points, a staggering 86 points adrift of teammate Charles Leclerc, who accumulated 242 points and secured seven podiums. The qualifying deficit was even more brutal: Leclerc dominated the head-to-head battle 19-5, with an average gap of 0.254 seconds separating the pair over a single lap. In race conditions, Leclerc's advantage was equally devastating at 18-3.

The car was the culprit

While Hamilton's qualifying struggles cannot be entirely excused, former Ferrari performance engineer Jock Clear has provided critical perspective on where true blame lies. Clear insists that "immediate success for Lewis Hamilton at the Scuderia would have demeaned Formula 1," suggesting that a seamless transition would have undermined the competitive integrity of the sport.

More importantly, Clear argues that Ferrari's fundamental car problems were the primary obstacle to Hamilton's success. The evidence supports this assessment: Ferrari discovered crippling limitations in the SF-25 early in the season, particularly surrounding aerodynamic efficiency and ride height optimization.

The root cause? A catastrophic aerodynamic-to-plank-wear tradeoff. To extract competitive pace from the car, Ferrari was forced to run the vehicle dangerously low to the ground. This aggressive setup generated the necessary downforce to stay in contention with McLaren, but it simultaneously created excessive wear on the mandatory plank material beneath the chassis. Run the car any higher to ensure regulatory compliance, and the aerodynamic performance evaporated entirely.

This structural flaw cost Ferrari dearly. The team had to "pay the bill for one third of the season" as it redirected development resources away from closing the gap to McLaren and toward solving the ride-height crisis. Critically, this meant that early-season development potential—the crucial period when championships are often decided—was squandered on damage control rather than forward progress.

Context matters: the Leclerc benchmark

It's fair to note that Leclerc is no ordinary benchmark. The Monegasque enjoyed seven seasons of familiarity with Ferrari's systems, culture, and operational procedures by 2025. Hamilton, by contrast, was navigating a completely foreign environment after 18 seasons at Mercedes, where he had cultivated an intimate understanding of every system and preference.

The comparison to Hamilton's predecessor Carlos Sainz is instructive. When Sainz joined Williams in 2025—another new team, another learning curve—he similarly struggled, finishing his first 16 races no higher than eighth place before securing two podiums later in the season. This pattern suggests that elite drivers require time to synchronize with new machinery and team dynamics.

That said, Hamilton's qualifying performance remained below expectations even by the standards of a driver in transition. Three consecutive Q1 exits by season's end, including eliminations at Qatar and Abu Dhabi, indicated that fundamental synchronization issues persisted throughout the year.

The disqualification: Ferrari's darkest hour

If a single moment encapsulated Ferrari's 2025 implosion, it was Shanghai's aftermath. Hamilton claimed a stunning Sprint victory—his sole Grand Prix-level win of the season—only to be disqualified from the main race 24 hours later for excessive plank wear. The car had been so aggressively set up to deliver competitive pace that it violated the sport's technical regulations.

Leclerc suffered the same fate, his disqualification for underweight regulations compounding Ferrari's embarrassment. In one fell swoop, both drivers' points were erased, and the fundamental weakness in Ferrari's car design was exposed to the entire paddock.

Looking forward: redemption in 2026

Ferrari ended 2025 fourth in the Teams' Championship, a catastrophic collapse from their 2024 position. Perhaps more damning: their points deficit to champions McLaren swelled from 14 points in 2024 to a humiliating 435 points in 2025.

The critical question now is whether 2026's regulation changes will provide Ferrari—and Hamilton—with a genuine opportunity at redemption. The new power unit era offers a reset button of sorts, though Hamilton will be 41 years old when the season begins. Clear has insisted that Hamilton "will do everything to see the Ferrari project through," suggesting the driver remains committed despite the devastating inaugural year.

For Ferrari, the 2025 season was not primarily a driver failure—it was an engineering catastrophe that no amount of talent could overcome. Hamilton deserves another chapter to prove himself in scarlet red, free from the constraints of a fundamentally compromised chassis. Whether he gets that chapter, and whether Ferrari can finally deliver a competitive car, will define his legacy at Maranello.