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November 14, 2025
Lewis Hamilton has taken the initiative to “challenge every area” at Ferrari as he pushes for changes to make the prancing horse a championship winning team once again.
Arriving in Maranello after an illustrious career marked by seven Formula 1 world championships, the 40-year-old is now confronting Ferrari’s title drought with an uncompromising drive for improvement and an unambiguous demand for change.
Lewis Hamilton’s time at Ferrari so far has been marred by disappointing results. While his teammate Charles Leclerc has already collected multiple podiums in the current campaign, the British driver has had to settle for a single sprint race victory and, otherwise, finishes outside of the top three.
For a team that has not grasped a drivers’ title since Kimi Raikkonen’s 2007 triumph and whose last constructors’ championship was achieved in 2008, the need for substantial, organization-wide reforms grows increasingly urgent with each passing season.
Undeniably, Ferrari has welcomed several F1 world champions throughout the past two decades—including Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel, and of course, Kimi Raikkonen.
Each star entered Maranello with championship winning pedigree and the aspiration to lift the legendary team back to its former heights, but Ferrari’s title drought persisted.
Hamilton has staked much of his legacy on not repeating the fates of those who came before him, making it a personal and professional mission to overhaul the elements within Ferrari that form the persistent blockade to greatness.
“I feel that it’s my job to challenge absolutely every area, to challenge everybody in the team, particularly the guys that are at the top making the decisions,” the seven-time world champion said in an interview at Spa-Francorchamps ahead of this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix
“If you look at the team over the last 20 years, they’ve had amazing drivers – you’ve had Kimi, you’ve had Fernando, you’ve had Sebastian – all world champions; however, they didn’t win a world championship. For me, I refuse for that to be the case with me.
“So, I’m going the extra mile. I’ve obviously been very fortunate to have had experiences in two other great teams. Whilst things are for sure going to be different, because there’s a different culture and everything, I think sometimes if you take the same path all the time, you get the same result.”
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Lewis Hamilton has embedded himself into the thick of Ferrari’s development process through numerous reports, meetings, and direct contributions at the team’s Maranello headquarters.
While other drivers opted for respite during the recent mid-season break, he committed days each week at the factory collaborating with key figures including chairman John Elkann, CEO Benedetto Vigna, team principal Fred Vasseur, head of car development Loic Serra, and leads of various technical departments.
These sessions focused on dissecting the shortcomings of the current SF-25, scrutinizing every facet from the car’s power delivery to its suspension configuration, and identifying which aspects must be carried forward and which are to be eliminated for the 2026 F1 car.
“Yeah, I was at the factory for two weeks, a couple of days each week,” he added. “We did preparation — naturally, going over where we were in the previous race, things that we need to change.
“I’ve sat with John [Elkann], Benedetto [Vigna], and Fred [Vasseur] in several meetings. I’ve sat with the head of car development, with Loic [Serra] and also the heads of different departments — talking about the engine, front and rear suspension for next year.
“I’ve sent documents, as I’ve done throughout the year. After the first few races, I did a full document for the team. Then, during this break, I had another two documents that I sent in.
“So, then I come in and want to address those. Some of it’s structural adjustments that we need to make as a team in order to get better in all the areas we want to improve and the other one was really about the car — the current issues that I have with this car.
“We did development for — tried the 2026 F1 car for the first time and started work on that. Thirty engineers come into the room, and you sit and debrief with every single one of them. So, big, big push. And otherwise just training — maybe a little bit too hard, a bit heavy this weekend.”
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