Has Max Verstappen pinpointed the reason for Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari struggles?

Losing to Charles Leclerc in every stat that matters, Max Verstappen has put Lewis Hamilton’s struggles down to leaving his “second family” at Mercedes and not feeling “secure or comfortable” at Ferrari.

Last year, Hamilton shocked the world of motorsport when he announced he would be leaving Mercedes after 12 years with the Silver Arrows to join Ferrari.

Max Verstappen believes “that” had an impact on Lewis Hamilton

It was billed as a blockbuster move, the sport’s most successful driver joining the iconic Ferrari Formula 1 team with the dream of winning a record-breaking eighth World title.

The blockbuster failed to live up to its billing.

Although Hamilton won the Chinese Grand Prix Sprint from pole, that was his sole highlight in a season that didn’t include a single Grand Prix podium.

The 40-year-old lost his qualifying head-to-head against his teammate Charles Leclerc by 5 to 19 and lagged behind the Monegasque driver 3 to 18 in the grands prix, both drivers were disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix after their SF-25s failed post-race inspection.

It led to a season of terse exchanges with his race engineer Riccardo Adami, while off the track, Hamilton sent documents to Ferrari, proposing a series of changes to the car and the team.

Hamilton went on to finish his debut campaign in red in sixth place in the Drivers’ standings, one position behind Leclerc, but 86 points down on his teammate.

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc: Ferrari 2025 head-to-head scores

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

His form this season, and in his final years at Mercedes, has led to debate about whether age has caught up with Hamilton or if the ground-effect cars of the last four years are just not suited to his driving style.

Verstappen, though, believes, at least for F1 2025, there was another dynamic in play – Hamilton leaving Mercedes after 12 years with the Brackley squad to join Ferrari.

“If you don’t feel secure or comfortable within the team dynamic you cannot be yourself and that has an impact,” the four-time World Champion told Press Association.

“You leave a team that has been your second family in Mercedes and you have built up such a career with them.

“Everyone benefitted off that, Mercedes and Lewis and then going in a completely different route is not easy, plus you are going up against a guy that has been there for a while. It is very tough.

“And age is not on your side. You are not going to become faster at that age, not necessarily slower, but definitely not faster, whereas Charles is still getting better so that is also not helping him.”

Ferrari ‘underestimated’ Hamilton challenge changing teams

It’s a theory that Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur agrees with.

The Frenchman, speaking during Ferrari’s end-of-season press briefing, admitted that everyone probably “underestimated” the huge changes that Hamilton would have to adjust to.

“I think it was difficult for Lewis, and it’s a small word, probably, that it was difficult,” Vasseur said as per Racingnews365.

“Because after 20 years with Mercedes — I say 20 years, because for me, McLaren was McLaren-Mercedes and then Mercedes — it was a huge change.

“I personally underestimated the step. It’s not that we are doing things worse or better. It’s that we are just doing things differently.

“It’s not just about the food or the weather; it’s that every single software is different, every single component is different. The people around him were different.

“And if you are not on top of everything, you leave on the table a couple of hundredths of a second, and today, with the field that we had — I think it was Abu Dhabi that Q2 that you had one tenth between P5 and P15 — it means that we were not in full control of every single detail of the package.

“And we lost, a little bit, parts of the season like this, and sometimes for less than one tenth of a second.

“I have in mind Budapest, when Charles, in Q2, was one-tenth faster than Lewis. Lewis was P11, and at the end, Charles finished with the pole position.”

The Frenchman added: “It’s not an excuse, it’s not a good reason.

“You have to be in front of everybody, but at the end of the day, we are speaking about details.

“And I think perhaps… We underestimated, for sure, the change of culture, the change of people around him, the change of everything.

“And even if we came back at a decent pace, I’m not speaking about classification, I’m speaking about collaboration and understanding of the car in the last part of the season, I think it was tough.”

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