What has happened to Lewis Hamilton? Many in the F1 paddock, be it former drivers or journalists, are wondering about the Briton’s form at Ferrari, even though this is a fresh chapter of his career. While it’s been only five races, Hamilton has struggled to deliver and seems a bit disconnected from the car, which is naturally affecting his confidence.
During his final few years with Mercedes, Hamilton would often express his frustrations with the car not being good enough to fight for podiums and victories. Ferrari’s SF-25 may not exactly be fighting at the sharp end of the grid now, but the team has shown potential they can be in the mix. However, Hamilton feels he is unable to deliver.
“There wasn’t one second [when I felt comfortable in the car],” Hamilton told Sky Sports after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix last weekend. “Clearly, the car is capable of being P3. Charles did a great job today. I can’t blame the car.” Certainly not the kind of remarks anyone would expect from the seven-time world champion, who is keen to chase his eighth with Ferrari.
Amid Hamilton’s struggles, however, Carlos Sainz—the 40-year-old’s predecessor at Ferrari—has started to settle at his new team, Williams. Naturally, if the Spaniard is doing better than Hamilton, that too at a midfield team like Williams, experts are wondering whether he would want to be ‘petty’ and rub it in Hamilton and Ferrari’s wounds.
“Let’s be petty just for a second,” Nicole Briscoe said on ESPN’s Unlapped podcast. “Like it’s got to feel good for Sainz because in the last two weeks when he has sort of flipped the switch and he has gone into qualifying and he has like resembled his old self; the one thing that you sort of like take away from you know the qualifying results is that Williams car is ahead of the Ferrari car, the one that replaced him“.
Carlos Sainz has now out-qualified his Ferrari replacement Lewis Hamilton in back-to-back races pic.twitter.com/bK9Khe0jAI
— Autosport (@autosport) April 19, 2025
Having out-qualified Hamilton in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, Sainz would feel quite good about himself and his team punching about their weight. Briscoe feels that these performances would help the 30-year-old subtly remind Ferrari of what they have let go. “You know the one that they were like, ‘No, we’re going to take Lewis Hamilton instead of you’,” she added.
“And [Sainz out-qualifying Hamilton] that’s happened now two weeks in a row. You can be petty, but you can also be like, ‘yup, look what I am doing over here'”.
In Bahrain, Sainz qualified eighth, with Hamilton qualifying right behind him in P9. A week later, the #55 driver once again edged out the Briton’s car by placing his FW47 in P6—which was definitely higher than Williams’ current performance benchmark.
While Sainz would have definitely felt disappointed last year when Ferrari announced that they would replace him with Hamilton for 2025, it is unlikely that the 30-year-old would’ve carried his disappointment until now. Sainz knows he has bigger fish to fry with his aim of improving Williams’ performance, both in the short term and long term.
After securing his first points finish on track in Jeddah, the Madrid-born driver expressed his happiness about how well the Grove-based team is performing currently. “I think today, honestly, we managed to nail a very good race and on top of that managed to help Alex to make sure he was getting in the points. So, very happy.” Sainz said after finishing P8 in Jeddah.
Knowing that Williams have a solid foundation on the technical front besides its enriching environment, Sainz seems quite content with where he is currently. While he would definitely miss fighting for podiums and wins for the Scuderia, the Spaniard knows the satisfaction of turning around a midfield team’s fortunes and chasing that feeling currently.
