Hamilton and Ferrari: What’s next?

After the hype, comes the pressure and weight of expectation.

The interest in Lewis Hamilton’s first few weeks at Ferrari has been nothing short of remarkable. Fans cramming themselves onto the bridge that overlooks the company’s Fiorano test track is not exactly unusual, but the sheer numbers, the media presence, the attempts to delve into lap times on a damp and cold circuit when items such as comfort and procedures are top of the agenda — the attention was huge.

Ferrari’s social media accounts felt a big bump too, with every chance to see Hamilton in red being lapped up by millions. And I’m not exaggerating with the use of millions, as multiple posts on Instagram received comfortably over seven figures in terms of interactions.

To be fair to Ferrari, it has taken plenty of opportunities to build on the cravings of fans. With the testing of previous car (TPC) outing at Fiorano being followed by another in Barcelona last week, and then even more Pirelli tire testing at the same venue over the past few days, there have been a number of chances to capture Hamilton in red. And that’s even before the release of the new driver overalls and team kit.

The content is likely to keep coming, because it carries such significant value, but with each passing image or video of Hamilton driving a Ferrari we will all become that bit more accustomed to it, and the novelty will start to wear off.

And that’s when the serious business will begin.

Don’t get me wrong, Ferrari and Hamilton (and Charles Leclerc) have been working hard already and will certainly count the past few weeks as serious business, but there’s a swell of excitement of anticipation at this stage of the year. That’s going to give way to expectation and reality, and nobody knows exactly how that is going to look.

Ferrari was really impressive in the second half of last year, as was Leclerc, with the pair top scoring in the two respective championships from the summer break onwards. Had Ferrari managed to beat McLaren to the constructors’ title in Abu Dhabi it would have been a remarkable achievement, but the overall score from Zandvoort onwards suggests the momentum is with Fred Vasseur’s team.

You can read how Leclerc is primed for a crucial year on a personal level in Edd Straw’s latest column, but Ferrari is in a similar position as a team overall. It has built up a head of steam and put itself firmly in the conversation for winning championships heading into 2025, alongside McLaren and Red Bull. Anything less than that would be a disappointment.

There’s been little to suggest Ferrari will fail to deliver on its promise, given the progress that has been displayed under Vasseur’s leadership. But that doesn’t mean there will be anything easy about trying to continue that good form.

At this point, simply seeing Hamilton and Ferrari working together is still exciting, but once pre-season testing gets underway and the real challenge of tackling races comes to the fore, then results are going to be the main source of interest and positivity.

Hamilton did not join Ferrari to ease into retirement. There will have been multiple reasons, but even if you just look at it on a simple, sporting level, he is moving from a Mercedes team that has largely struggled in the ground effect era, to a team that has won races in all of the past three seasons and shown greater week-to-week consistency.

If the Ferrari is competitive, then the pressure is instantly going to be high between the two teammates. I’m not predicting a bad relationship by any stretch, but when on one side of the garage there is Leclerc, trying to show Ferrari that he is still the driver who will eventually deliver a drivers’ championship entering his seventh season with the Scuderia, and the other is Hamilton, who automatically commands respect wherever he drives given his incredible record, it’s not a simple dynamic.

Yet that will still be far better than if Ferrari is not quite in race-winning form at the start of the season. Given the way it ended last year – and the one-two in Melbourne 12 months ago – expectations are that the SF-25 will be a challenger, but fall short of that target and things could become very tense, very quickly.

Hamilton cannot afford to wait much longer for another proper shot at a drivers’ championship, and the huge regulation changes of 2026 present a major unknown. If it’s not this year, then it could be multiple seasons before another chance presents itself.

And that would represent a slightly more urgent situation for Leclerc, too. At 27 he has far more time on his side than Hamilton, of course, but the Monegasque appears to be smoothing certain rough edges and producing more consistent race performances that suggest he is very close to — if not already at — his prime. The dynamic for him has also changed from being Ferrari’s future to Ferrari’s now.

Of course, both of those scenarios are pre-emptive, but this is Ferrari, and this is Lewis Hamilton. For better or worse, neither gets the benefit of patience or caveats. They’ve both achieved too much, and have too much potential.

There was a glimpse of it when Hamilton damaged the SF-23 during the TPC test at Barcelona, with the car requiring repairs before it could run again. The scramble to find out what happened, the coverage such a moment got — when other drivers have most certainly crashed during a TPC but never seen it reported — shows the level of spotlight that is going to be on this partnership.

There are so many permutations for how this season could go, and the performance of the car will always be central to those. Once it runs in anger in Bahrain, the first-day-in-a-new-job bounce will have long since been replaced by the steely determination of the competitors that exist within Hamilton, Leclerc and Ferrari.

From then on, it will all play out in front of a global audience, rather than a few hundred at Fiorano and through the lens of Ferrari’s social media channels. Whichever route it takes from that point is going to be box office.