Lewis Hamilton plus Ferrari was a match made in F1 heaven. Well, not so fast.

The marriage has been rockier than anyone expected, at least on the track

- Joshua Robinson

From the moment Lewis Hamilton strode through the gates at Ferrari's historic Maranello campus outside Modena, Italy, he became the star of his own Italian opera. The hero, the greatest driver Formula One has ever known, was living out his childhood dream, having joined Ferrari, and things couldn't be going better. He posed in front of the house where Enzo Ferrari, the team's founder, had lived. He pulled on the famous red overalls. And he even chuckled through a few words of Italian. The F1 world couldn't help but applaud.

Then Hamilton actually squeezed into his race car, and a harsher reality began to set in.

After winning six of his record seven world championships in a Mercedes, adapting to a new team with new terminology, new colleagues and a new teammate in Charles Leclerc was always going to be a challenge. But how quickly Hamilton could make it work instantly became the headline story of the 2025 season.

So far, it's been rockier than anyone expected. The 40-year-old Hamilton crashed one car during testing in Italy, scraped into 10th place at the first Grand Prix of the season in Australia, and found himself stripped of a result in the second race in China when both Ferraris in the race were disqualified for technical violations. Through five races, he has only cracked the top six once and has yet to reach the podium.

"Hopefully we won't do that again as I continue to learn this car," Hamilton said after his disqualification in Shanghai. "Obviously we're losing ground to the McLarens points-wise...but we've just got to keep pushing." McLaren is currently first in the F1 team standings.