Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari: What will success look like for seven-time world champion at Italian team?

In 2024, Hamilton was comprehensively out-qualified by a team-mate for the first time in his career, ending the season 19-5 down to George Russell in their one-lap head-to-head, at an average deficit of 0.171 seconds.

Although both won two races, Hamilton finished 22 points adrift in the championship.

It was a confusing situation, because in 2022 and 2023, the two had been closely matched in qualifying, and one of them finished ahead in the championship one year and the other the other.

The bottom line is that Hamilton struggled with the characteristics of the 2024 Mercedes more than Russell.

The car had slow-corner understeer. The way to counteract this was to slide the rear on entry to promote turn-in. But doing that generates rear tyre temperature, which reduces grip, a problem that increases over time. Hamilton was less able to deal with this than Russell.

On top of this, there is no question that, frustrated by his qualifying deficit, Hamilton would sometimes push too hard when it mattered right at the end of qualifying. That led to mistakes, which further harmed his performance.

The Mercedes engineers felt that there was something about the general characteristics of the current generation of cars and their ground-effect design philosophy that does not marry as well with Hamilton’s style as the previous generations of cars.

But just because that was the case last year does not mean it will be the same this year at Ferrari. It may depend on how the car behaves.

Equally, it’s impossible to know how much of an effect psychology had – Hamilton had to do a whole year with Mercedes, the longest season in history, knowing he was leaving at the end of the season, and with his heart effectively already elsewhere.

Certainly Vasseur believes that is too important to ignore. And Hamilton is of the same opinion.