The real issue affecting Lewis Hamilton – and it’s not the Italian press
Lewis Hamilton will drop five places on the Italian GP grid
Lewis Hamilton’s big move to Ferrari for the F1 2025 season has thus far been something of a struggle, with the SF-25 being a handful and Hamilton struggling to adapt to his new team.
But Marcin Budkowski — formerly Alpine team principal between 2021 and 2022, but also a Ferrari engineer between 2002 and 2007 — feels that there is at least one thing that’s not bothering Hamilton: The Italian media.
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The marriage between Lewis Hamilton and Scuderia Ferrari has not been a happy one thus far, with the seven-time World Champion struggling to find his footing.
Early signs of discontent were clear at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, when Hamilton and race engineer Ricardo Adami struggled to stay on the same page with their communications, and the frustrations have only grown as the outfit faced disqualifications, points-less finishes, and most recently, a retirement.
For all of Hamilton’s struggles, though, former Ferrari team member Marcin Budkowski believes that the Italian media is, at the very least, not contributing to the issue.
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“The pressure is huge from the Italian press and from the Italian society in general,” Budkowski said on the F1 Nation podcast.
“I don’t think Lewis cares about that.
“You know, I’ve worked with Lewis a little bit at McLaren many years ago, but I don’t know him for who is now, he’s obviously evolved a lot; I worked with him in his first years in Formula 1.
“But I don’t think he’s at the stage where, you know what, what the Corriera della Serra writes about him is, you know, keeping him awake at night.”
Rather, Budkowski argues, the issue is that Hamilton is failing to find race-winning pace.
“I think it’s just more he wants this to be a success,” he continued.
“He wants this to be the culmination of his career. It’s more difficult than everybody expected, and I think the frustration is growing on his side and probably on the team side as well.”
The ties between Ferrari and the Italian motorsport press run deep. The team’s success is tied deeply to a sense of Italian national pride, and the national media often vacillates between support and scrutiny depending on the performance of the team.
That much was obvious earlier this season when Italian publications suggested team principal Fred Vasseur was on his way out of the team, prompting the Frenchman to call the coverage “disrespectful” to the hard-working members of the team.
In Hamilton’s case, though, Budkowski argues that the driver would avoid being swept up in that kind of talk — and that even the cultural differences between British and Italian-based teams fail to play a significant role in the British driver’s frustration.
“I don’t think the Italian side of it has so much to do with it,” Budkowski explained.
‘Every team has slightly different ways of working, different processes. The Italian way of working is a little bit less organised and a bit more creative.
“However, when I was there — and it was a different era — the internal politics and the stuff like that, Ross [Brawn] wouldn’t allow this to happen in a technical team. And that was one of Ross’s strength. He cut all the blame game and then just said, ‘We’re a team. We’re working together. It doesn’t matter who made a mistake or whose fault it is. Let’s solve the issues.’
“What is the atmosphere there now? I have no idea, but I think it’s really more [that] the car is different, the process are different, the methods of working are different. And for Lewis, it’s a different beast.
“He was already struggling a little bit at Mercedes last year. He was slower than George [Russell] in most qualifying sessions; he never really adapted to this new generation of cars.
“I think he’s going to wait for next year to see the new generation of cars, and see if that suits his driving style. And I think, honestly, if it remains as it is now, then probably the most logical thing is for both sides to say, you know, ‘We tried. We gave a good shot. We enjoyed working together, and it’s best to stop there.’
“I don’t think Lewis is going to want to stay for forever if he is struggling and not winning races.
“He wants to win with Ferrari. Either he will believe that he can win with Ferrari, or he will probably go.”
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