Lewis Hamilton says winning a world championship with Ferrari is a higher priority for him than taking a record-breaking eighth title.
He came within one lap of claiming his eighth title in 2021. But, having joined Ferrari from Mercedes this year, Hamilton said winning a title with Formula 1’s most historic team is his main goal.“For me, it’s the first,” he told media including RaceFans after driving the team’s new car for the 2025 season today at Fiorano. “Winning a championship at Ferrari is the first. That’s what I’m working towards.
“I don’t think about the number eight. I’m thinking about the first championship that the team’s won for some time.”
Ferrari last won the constructors’ championship in 2008, the same year Hamilton scored his first world title. No Ferrari driver has won the championship since Kimi Raikkonen the year before – Hamilton’s first season in the sport.
“They’ve already had many world championships over their history so for me it’s looking for that first one with the team,” said Hamilton.
“I’m also aware there’s a lot of drivers that never, ever get to win a world championship, first and foremost,” he added. “I’ve been fortunate to work in two teams previously, work with great organisations, and you’ve seen in the history of the sport where you’ve got great teams and things don’t align and they end up, some of them, not winning world championships.
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“But this team already has an insane legacy and they’re not short of how many world championships they’ve won. So I think in their DNA they have that winning mentality.”
Ferrari finished second to McLaren in the constructors’ championship last year, the two teams separated by just 16 points. Hamilton expects the fight at the front will remain close this year.
“The competition is fierce and we’ve had great results from other iconic teams like McLaren and now Red Bull and obviously Mercedes. It is going to be close at the top.
“But I’ve got a great team. The energy that I’m receiving from the team, there’s magic here. It’s going to still take a lot of hard work and grafting and everyone’s putting that in already to achieve it. But it’s also about belief. Everyone here dreams of winning with Ferrari, every single person in this team.”
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El Pollo Loco
19th February 2025, 20:15
Sure…
David BR (@david-br)
19th February 2025, 20:50
? In terms of motivation, I’d imagine winning a first title at Ferrari is way ahead of winning title number 8 on every parameter.
El Pollo Loco
19th February 2025, 21:53
I was referring to “I’m not thinking about number 8.”
But even for the other, no, becoming the sole holder of the most titles in F1 history and the sport’s most important accolade ranks just a tad higher than one title with Ferrari. He/nor anybody would trade two titles and the F1 record to have one title with Ferrari. It does make it the most epic way to gain the record though.
SteveP
19th February 2025, 22:05
Presumably because he’s already done that one.
El Pollo Loco
19th February 2025, 22:15
In your mind at least. And we know what an objective mind it is.
Fred Fedurch
20th February 2025, 22:12
There’s a book that they write all the F1 records in. What does that say?
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st February 2025, 21:15
Hamilton surely ranks below verstappen in terms of performance in 2021; does schumacher rank below villeneuve for 1997? Cause if not (I’d argue no), then HE should have 8 titles.
What I mean is there’s various controversial things that might happen, but it doesn’t only go for hamilton, in fact I’d say hamilton already won more titles than a driver of his ability should have, as he had 5 years in a dominant car (2014-2016 + 2019 and 2020).
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st February 2025, 21:15
Prost is another driver who only got 4 titles but was within a few points of it being 7.
David BR (@david-br)
20th February 2025, 2:26
Depends how you read Hamilton’s comment. To me it’s about motivation for this season, not that he’s literally not given any thought to an eighth title (obviously he has from the comment alone). Like you said, winning at Ferrari would be epic because it’s Ferrari, because they haven’t won a title for so long, because he’d have to beat Leclerc, and because it would be a WDC at a third team, making him the only driver in history – aside from Fangio (four) – to win at more than two teams.
And I also think SteveP has more of a point than you’re willing to acknowledge. In Hamilton’s mind, he has won 8 titles – and had the eighth taken away. Just as in Massa’s mind he has a world title. Personally I always thought the best way to erase for Hamilton that bad memory was to switch to another team and win there, not stick around at Mercedes and feel that trapped in 2021 still. So it makes sense for that reason too that a title at Ferrari would be so important.
SteveP
20th February 2025, 7:37
+1
Although Massa has the problem that it was mistakes – by his team, and himself – that left him pointless in the Singapore event.
Yes, Alonso’s “win” was from a cheat, but the crash affected all the other teams equally and only one driver & team screwed up.
Objectivity, will the first sainthood candidate step forward, please?
I should probably point out that, if anyone should care to look back, this site contains comments from me saying that I wished that Ferrari would, just for once, get things right instead of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, because, you know, “the red car…”
El Pollo Loco
20th February 2025, 11:07
Well, if you’ve got DavidBR agreeing with you about Hamilton you know you’re right. Everyone has a bias to one degree or another, but yours is just hilarious obvious. It’s not that you’re a Hamilton fan. It’s that you ooze hatred toward Hamilton’s most well known competitors. Whether Hamilton has won an 8th WDC is not up for debate. He hasn’t. There are many titles that have been lost or won due to controversial incidents and penalties. The only thing special about Hamilton’s case is that it came during the last laps of the last race. That does not make it a more valid case. It just makes it more a visible case.
David BR (@david-br)
20th February 2025, 11:48
Just to point out in case it wasn’t clear by my remarks: I think Hamilton believes he had an eighth title taken from him, but I don’t think he actually has 8 titles (nor does Hamilton, obviously). It was a more subtle point about motivation, perhaps lost if you want to see everything in black and white terms and set up other people commenting here as straw puppets to knock down, which really only exists in your own head.
Adrian Hancox (@ahxshades)
19th February 2025, 20:19
But – they’re both the same thing!
Ideals (@ideals)
19th February 2025, 20:27
Maybe aim a bit lower first. Maybe aim for a pole position, a podium, maybe a win this season. Take it from there.
El Pollo Loco
19th February 2025, 20:39
That’s not what the GOATs do. Everything is on an upward trajectory at Ferrari, they’ve gone aggressive in the final year of the spec and there are no noises about unexpected technical problem or development issues from inside the team and they looked just as strong as McLaren at the end of last season. An educated guess says they should be strong this year.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st February 2025, 21:22
This goes for alonso, and I’m not talking about driver ability, but about the car: several podiums when aston was quite good, yes, but apart from that he’s still in a decade + long pole and win draught, and he occasionally mentioned the 3rd title, but the most realistic prospect of success is a win or a pole for him; when it comes to hamilton, he won races and got poles at least occasionally even after mercedes stopped being dominant, with a record 3 years win draught, but a couple wins last year, so definitely the ambition has to be a title, or at least several wins, although ferrari has a title draught almost a long as alonso’s!
Edvaldo
19th February 2025, 21:23
Prost, Alonso, and Vettel failed at winning there, so, even if he fails, he’ll be in good company.
But that’s a good mindset to have. To do it with Ferrari, especially now that again there’s a long time they don’t win, it’s a whole different thing.
An Sionnach
19th February 2025, 21:38
Even if he achieves the impossible with Ferrari, that will be enough. Like Prost and Alonso, but not Vettel!
El Pollo Loco
19th February 2025, 21:59
Indeed. Prost and Alonso carried the team on their shoulders. The team carried Vettel on its shoulders or, at best, they had one arm around each other’s shoulders. Sort of like how Schumacher carried the team on his shoulders in the ‘90s.
MichaelN
20th February 2025, 9:23
The same team that produced an awful 2016 car after the three wins in 2015 was supposedly them getting to grips with the new regulations? That never instructed Raikkonen to play the team game? That took months of updates off the car in 2018 because everything they came up with made the car slower? That had such poor race strategists that Vettel constantly had to second guess his engineer? That descended into petty politics after the death of Marchionne, leading to the wholly inept Binotto being made team principal?
And what good has it done Ferrari? Binotto’s 2019 car was not legal, and still failed. The 2020 car was awful. The 2021 car wasn’t a factor at all. The 2022 car was nowhere once Red Bull shed its excess weight, and Leclerc fumbled a 50 plus points lead in record time, spinning out in multiple races. The 2023 car was irrelevant compared to Red Bull. In 2024 they were again outmatched by not just Red Bull, but McLaren and sometimes Mercedes as well. And there’s only one reason it was even closenin the WCC: Pérez.
I’m all for cheering Ferrari on, but let’s also be honest: they have been very, very poor since the Marchionne/Arrivabene/Vettel combination came to an end. Not a factor at all. And this notion that Vettel somehow didn’t perform is way off. He won more races for Ferrari than everyone except Schumacher and Lauda (and it was just one or two short) in a time where Mercedes utterly dominated F1. His teammate Räikkönen managed all of one win. Just one.
El Pollo Loco
20th February 2025, 11:00
I know it’s hard to hear as a huge Vettel fan, but Vettel was pretty average at Ferrari. He barely beat Raikkonen, who was ahead for much of the year, in their second season together despite Ferrari constantly favoring Seb with its strategy. Vettel was not bad at Ferrari, but he just wasn’t very good. It was not that he didn’t win a title, which would have been very difficult. It’s that he didn’t even make it close when he had the car to do it.
anon
20th February 2025, 13:43
It’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that their 2016 car was “awful” – it wasn’t as competitive as in 2015, but you are being a bit over dramatic in calling it awful.
Furthermore, part of the reason for the slight drop in performance in 2016 was the conscious decision that, since there was a major regulation change coming in for 2017, it wasn’t worth investing heavily into developing a car that would be obsolete at the end of that year – a decision that many other teams have made over the years.
Equally, aren’t many of your criticisms applicable to other teams too? We’ve seen many other teams criticised for not telling their drivers to play the team game – and others criticised when they have done so – whilst last year saw Red Bull struggling with updates and having to remove some parts that had been developed for months on their car (and plenty of others have had similar troubles in recent years – especially Aston Martin, which has had several troubled years in a row).
As for strategic issues, we’ve seen many others castigated for that – see McLaren being criticised more heavily in 2024 when they became more competitive as one example – and there are several other teams on the grid which faced accusations of excessive internal infighting following the loss of a major senior figure for one reason or another (just look at Red Bull last year).
SteveP
20th February 2025, 18:17
Some teams have a failing or two. The problem Ferrari seems to have had for quite a while is that they take all the individual failings of other teams and bundle them all together.
That’s part of my, “can they, just once, get it all right”, line of thinking.
Which Mr. KFC should note pre-dates any inkling of Hamilton going to Ferrari.
anon
20th February 2025, 19:39
SteveP, I would disagree and say there are still several teams where you could still have applied many of those complaints to them, and yet not seen the same intensity of criticism levelled at them.
SteveP
20th February 2025, 20:26
Red Bull – retaining Perez way past his use by date. Horner.
Torro-Rosso-Alpha-Tauri-VCARB-Red-Bull-Assistance – Ricciardo, and so much more
McLaren – pit stop strategy, team orders implementation
Mercedes – Hanging onto the first 2022 design concept
Aston Martin – continuing with Stroll in the second seat, taking a good initial design and downgrading it at regular intervals ever since
Alpine – messing up the Piastri contract, messing up the Alonso contract, messing up the car design
Sauber – for losing interest before they’ve handed over to Audi, (i’m not convinced Binotto isn’t going to repeat his Ferrari mistakes either, so hiring him may count too)
Williams – getting rid of one crash prone driver and retaining one that is almost as crash prone.
Haas – for taking so long to promote the head of technical to team principal so that the technical standard can improve now that he’s not heading things up.
Did I miss one that people have criticised long and loud?
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st February 2025, 21:26
For someone who knows all toro rosso names, I’m shocked by the insistence at writing toro with 2 “r”.
Sham (@sham)
19th February 2025, 21:49
Ferrari feels like a very different prospect under Fred Vasseur. Like the faithful might actually have their faith rewarded.
Should be fun to find out.
El Pollo Loco
19th February 2025, 22:03
It does, but it also helps that the car is coming good. That began before he got there. But he’s likely been key in minimizing political squabbles and turning Ferrari’s strategy and operations from consistent clown show to mostly solid and even some great calls (they had a few hiccups, but less than most). Obviously being a very likable guy helps a lot too, especially when your peers are Toto and Horner.
SteveP
20th February 2025, 18:28
That I agree with 100% – I spent years wondering why they repeated so many mistakes race after race that it was as you put it “a clown show”
It might be interesting to see how many of the error creators of previous years are still with the team. Did they finally find their elusive clue, or were they “allowed” to “seek other career development opportunities”?
Sometimes people won’t learn, sometimes they aren’t allowed to learn.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st February 2025, 21:30
Yes, I think vasseur can get the credit for the improvement of the strategy calls and such, which is important, because for example in 2022, initially the car was up there, but they made way too many mistakes that way, and then ofc they have to be good at in-season development too, it’s been their problem in 2017 and 2022 especially, for a few races also in 2018, years where they started off being competitive.
MichaelN
20th February 2025, 9:26
He’s now been there for 2023 and 2024, years in which Ferrari did nothing more than score the odd win. I’d love it if they were able to challenge for a title, but good vibes only go so far. Especially after multiple years of not producing results.
tielemst
20th February 2025, 14:13
Agreed, but the usual noise and hubris seems to be a lot less now than it was under Binotto and Arrivabene. I think fred does have some impact in that regard. it could mean that there’s a more structured way to bring the team forward.
F180 (@f180)
20th February 2025, 1:36
Every race will be a fairy tale.
WheeledWarrior
20th February 2025, 12:02
If the car is good enough, I can see him win a couple of races.
A championship in these mammoth seasons with 24 GP’s and 6 sprints? Not likely anymore at his age, and even if the car really winds up class of the field, I’d doubt he could beat Leclerc over such a long season.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st February 2025, 21:31
Yes, it’s an uphill battle for him definitely, but will be unusual and interesting to see him in a ferrari, sort of reversal of what we’ve been used to for almost 2 decades, like schumacher in a mclaren.