Leclerc "doesn't really have advice" for Hamilton after tough first Ferrari F1 season
by Jake Boxall-Legge · AutosportLewis Hamilton endured a testing first year at Ferrari after moving from Mercedes for 2025
While Charles Leclerc empathised with Lewis Hamilton's tribulations in his first Formula 1 season with Ferrari, the Monegasque felt he had little leeway over 2025 to help the seven-time champion adapt to the team.
Hamilton's struggles were well-publicised over the year, especially in the wake of the attention that his move had commanded. After 11 years with Mercedes, Hamilton needed to adapt to both Ferrari's working processes and an unfamiliar engineering team around him.
Despite promise at the start of the year, exemplified by his sprint race win in China, the majority of Hamilton's results fell between fourth and eighth during the 24 grands prix this season - despite culminating in a trio of Q1 exits. The podium eluded Hamilton, however, which put him under threat of losing sixth in the championship to Mercedes successor Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
Social media coverage put a more negative spin on Hamilton's first year with Ferrari, with inferences that he was not able to forge a strong relationship with race engineer Riccardo Adami, but Ferrari has maintained that Hamilton's relationship with the team is much stronger than it appears.
Leclerc says that his own obligations to perform and chase results has made it difficult for him to help Hamilton out in his own time. Regardless, he understood that it would take Hamilton more time to adapt - noting that his own long tenure with Ferrari has ensured a "natural" and harmonious relationship with the Prancing Horse.
"My job is to obviously maximise whatever I can do in my control," Leclerc began.
"And there's already so many things I'm focused on for myself, and the team, to try and make sure that my driving fits the car in the best possible way.
"It's obviously difficult for me to then also spend time [helping Hamilton]. And also Lewis has achieved a lot more than I ever did. I don't really have any advice to give him.
"It's for sure a long process whenever you join a new team. I mean, I don't even remember what it's like to be joining a new team. It's been eight [sic] years that I'm at Ferrari.
"So I know how it works. And obviously everything feels very natural. But for Lewis, it's still kind of new even after a year.
"The processes are completely different, the way you have the vision, the team, the way you work. So all of that still needs some time to get used to."
On the team's fortunes as a whole, Leclerc believed that Ferrari "did a good job" in digging results out of its SF-25, and that overall performance was the key mitigating factor.
Ferrari had chosen not to evolve the key concepts on its SF-24 for the 2025 season and instead produced a design based around an all-new suspension package, but ended development in April which restricted its understanding of the new car.
"I felt like we did a good job maximising our car throughout the year like that. But the performance of the car is just not good enough," Leclerc added.
"So that's what we are lacking. I think Mercedes, the closest team to us this year, had very big ups and bigger downs as well.
"On our side, we're probably more consistent, but unfortunately consistently off the pace and not ever at the pace of the guys in front. But that's just overall performance."
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- The Autosport.com Team