With Fred Vasseur’s appointment as Ferrari’s team principal from 2023 onwards, the Frenchman has tried his best to change the culture of the side and help the Maranello-based outfit return to winning ways. He has introduced a ‘no-blame’ culture within the Scuderia.
That said, it hasn’t borne any substantial fruits till now as the team’s 17-year-long title drought persists. After a promising season in 2024 that saw the team lose out on the Constructors’ title to McLaren by just 14 points, Lewis Hamilton’s arrival felt like the last piece of the puzzle to elevate Ferrari as the benchmark of the field.
But six races into the 2025 season, Ferrari are facing a harsh reality check as they are even struggling to get Grand Prix podiums this year. Barring Hamilton’s surprise win during the Chinese GP sprint race and his third-place finish in the Miami GP sprint last weekend, there has been little to cheer about for him and Ferrari.
During the Miami GP, matters reached a boiling point as Hamilton had a pretty heated verbal spat with his race engineer, Riccardo Adami. The two had a heated exchange after a team orders fiasco saw Hamilton lose out on a potential opportunity to fight Mercedes’ Andrea Kimi Antonelli for P6. In the end, the Briton crossed the chequered flag in P8.
Hamilton’s radio: “Have a tea break while you’re at it” #F1 #MiamiGP pic.twitter.com/8e1uGmOClj
— Radio Messages (@radiomessages) May 5, 2025
Hamilton had been pushing the team to swap him around with teammate Charles Leclerc. Hamilton felt his fresher medium tires would allow him to charge up the field and fight with Antonelli.
But the team left the decision two laps too late, leading to Hamilton eating up his tires and having to hand the position back to Leclerc. The British racing ace was furious with the pit wall’s indecisiveness and threw many angry remarks at them.
Now, former Ferrari manager Peter Windsor has slammed Vasseur for even pursuing Hamilton in the first place when legendary designer Adrian Newey was on the market after his Red Bull exit last season. “He [Vasseur] didn’t get Adrian Newey, and he has decided to stick with the homegrown boys and girls,” Windsor began.
The F1 expert then went on to explain that Ferrari had a very strong driver lineup with Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, and did not need to shell out upwards of a billion dollars to lure Hamilton into the team instead. In fact, Windsor feels that Vasseur should have utilized that money to get Newey to the team, who could have delivered a title-winning car.
“I’ve always said that if you’ve got Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz and you’ve got, I don’t know, a billion euros to spend, would you spend that on Lewis Hamilton or would you spend that on Newey? They didn’t actually need Lewis Hamilton… what they needed was Adrian Newey,” the former Ferrari man added.
In the four years that Sainz spent alongside Leclerc at Ferrari, the Madrid-born driver had been consistently on par with his teammate, extracting the maximum from the car and raking in the points. On the other hand, Hamilton has struggled to adapt to the Ferrari machinery so far and is lagging considerably behind Leclerc.
This deficit has meant that Ferrari sit only fourth in the Constructors’ standings, quite a way behind the leading duo of Mercedes and McLaren. With such being the team’s struggles, Windsor couldn’t find any credence in pursuing Hamilton.
Moreover, he even pointed out that considering Ferrari’s legacy in the sport, they did not need a star-power name such as Hamilton to attract sponsors. So, Windsor believes that Ferrari did not get their priorities right and are now suffering because of it.
