Lewis Hamilton has been creating and sending documents of suggestions to Ferrari as part of his mission to ensure he doesn’t repeat Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel’s failure to win a title with Ferrari.
Hamilton’s first half-season with Ferrari has been a rollercoaster that’s so far peaked with a sprint win in China and troughed with consecutive Q2 exits and zero grand prix podiums to team-mate Charles Leclerc’s four.
But his focus remains on helping transform Ferrari into a championship-winning force and ensuring he’s well-positioned to extract that potential if Ferrari delivers him that car.
He revealed that work has included curating documents from what he’s learned across his first 12 race weekends with Ferrari, having spent 12 consecutive seasons with Mercedes.
“I was at the factory, two weeks, a couple days each week, we did preparation ...and naturally going over where we were on the previous race, things that we need to change,” Hamilton said when asked what he’d done in the three-week break since Silverstone.
“I held a lot of meetings, so I've called on lots of meetings with the heads of the team. So I've sat with John [Elkan, Ferrari chairperson], Benedetto [Vigna, Ferrari CEO] and Fred [Vasseur, team boss] in several meetings.
“I've sat with the head of our car development, with Loic [Serra], but also the heads of different departments, talking about engine for next year, talking about front suspension for next year, talking about rear suspension for next year, things that you want, issues that you have, that I have with this car.
“I've sent documents so I've done through 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 its structural adjustments that we need to make as a team in order to get better, in all the areas that we want to improve, and then the other one was really about the car.
"The current issues that I have with this car, that some things that you do want to take on to the next year's car, and some that you need to work on changing for next year.
“We did development. Tried the 2026 car for the first time, and started work on that. And 30 engineers come to 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.”
Leclerc said he's involved in those meetings too; "both of us are inside the meetings, then we speak about those points we want to improve. We’re aligned with everything, together with the team."
Avoiding Alonso and Vettel’s fate
Hamilton made it clear that he doesn’t want his Ferrari stint to end in the same way as fellow world champions Alonso and Vettel, who spent a combined 11 seasons there between 2010-2020 with a plethora of wins but no title to show for it.
“The reason for it is that I see a huge amount of potential within this team,” Hamilton said when asked why he’d made these documents.
“The passion, nothing comes close to that. It is a huge organisation, and there's a lot of moving parts, and not all of them are firing on all the cylinders that [they] need to be.
“That's ultimately why the team's not had the success that I think it deserves. So 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 who are making the decisions.
“If you look at the team over the last 20 years, they've had amazing drivers. You've had Kimi [Raikkonen], you've had Fernando, you've had Sebastian, all world champions, however, they didn't win a World Championship [with Ferrari, apart from Raikkonen].
“And for me, I'm like, 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. And while things for sure are going to be different, because there's a different culture and everything, I think it's sometimes if you take the same path all the time, you get the same results. So I'm just challenging certain things.
“They've been incredibly responsive. We've been improving in so many areas, through marketing, through everything we're continuously delivering for sponsors. The way the engineers continue to work, there's lots of work and improvements to be made, but very responsive.
“I guess ultimately, just trying to really create allies within the organisation and get them geed up, getting them pushing for ‘I'm here to win’, and I don't have as much time as this one here (points to 18-year-old Kimi Antonelli), so it's like it's crunch time, and this is for me.
“I truly believe in the potential of this team. I really, really believe that they can win multiple world championships moving forwards, they already have an amazing legacy, but during my time, that's my sole goal.”
Slow upgrade progress
Hamilton played down expectations for Ferrari’s Belgian Grand Prix suspension upgrade, believing the car felt exactly the same during their debut at a Mugello filming day as it felt at the British GP.
He thinks Ferrari is “highly unlikely” to be able to extract its full potential given Spa is a sprint weekend with a single practice session prior to sprint qualifying on Friday evening.
But he is pleased the pace of Ferrari’s upgrades has increased with the debut of a new floor at the Austrian GP followed by the debut of the new suspension this weekend at Spa.
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“We'll get to test the suspension tomorrow, and I'm sure there's going to be learnings from it. We'll kind of figure out how to fine-tune it and to try to extract performance from it,” Hamilton said.
“On the simulator, there's no difference. But I'm sure, across different circuits, perhaps there'll be benefits.
“So I think for me, the positive thing is arriving at the filming day, where you see that new bits are coming, you see that we are getting development because in general, we had an upgraded floor in Bahrain. Then it was quite some time before we got another upgrade, I think, was Austria.
“So pace-wise, it wasn't necessarily to what I would have thought we would have.
“If you look at some of the other teams, they bring them small pieces every single weekend, like Red Bull often do, or Mercedes do, for example, is where these are more like big chunks along the way.
“I was just really happy to see that there clearly is a big push back at the factory. There are a lot of changes, and then to see the results of those changes takes time.
"So I was just really grateful to see that we've got new parts. We'll try and put them to use this weekend.”
Leclerc said "it would be quite stupid" to disclose the specifics of the behavioural characteristics of the suspension, but he isn't anticipating any struggles with adapting to the upgraded car at Spa.
