After an underwhelming P7 finish at the 2025 F1 Japanese GP, Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton hopes to see “positive changes” from the Italian team at the upcoming Bahrain GP.
While speaking to the media after Sunday’s race, Hamilton, who finished three places behind his teammate, Charles Leclerc, explained that his side of the garage had been underperforming in the the opening three races of the 2025 season. Hamilton added that he believed that he had managed “the best result” possible at Suzuka despite the deficits.
“We’ll see hopefully some positive changes,” Hamilton said, “Through the first three races, there’s been a bit of a deficit between both sides of the garage, on my side something underperforming.”
“It’s good to know, with what I had that’s the best result I could get.”
Lack of safety car prevented alternate tyre strategy from helping Hamilton’s race
Hamilton believes that his race was not helped by his use of an alternative strategy. Having qualified eighth, four places behind teammate Leclerc, Ferrari started Hamilton on the hard compound tyres, despite the majority of the grid, including Leclerc, starting on the mediums.
While not the ideal strategy to help Hamilton make up places off the line, a safety car could have improved the F1 veteran’s race. However, as one failed to materialise, he found himself stuck outside of the DRS range of Mercedes rookie, Kimi Antonelli.
“In the end, there wasn’t a safety car, so it didn’t make much difference.”
Though Hamilton did enjoy better pace in the second stint, after switching to the medium-compound tyres, he could not get past the Antonelli and ultimately ended the race in P7, one place up from where he started. Upon reflection, Hamilton believes that he would have been better off starting on the medium tyres.
“I think the medium was definitely better for the start of the race, especially in these cool conditions.”
Hamilton “didn’t have anything else in the car”
This wrong tyre strategy, combined with an on-going technical issue that had plagued him throughout weekend, left Hamilton unable to match the performance of his more competitive rivals, including former team, Mercedes. While his lenghty F1 experience, with includes five race wins at the Suzuka Circuit, certainly would have helped him make up for some of the deficits of the SF-25, Hamilton was forced to settle for seventh-place, having taken all that he could from his car.
“I was at maximum today. I didn’t have anything else in the car with underperformance happening at the rear of the car this weekend.“
Hamilton hoping that Ferrari can “get a bit closer” to rivals in Bahrain
While Hamilton did acknowledge that qualifying position had played a role in the outcome of his race, he admitted that he did not think that he would have been competitive against the likes of McLaren and Mercedes, due to his lack of pace and performance compared to them.
“Obviously, qualifying position is key [but] I think I probably would have been overtake by [the] McLarens and Mercedes if I was any further ahead.”
However, with the Bahrain GP looming, and the Saudi Arabian GP just one week after that, Hamilton hopes that Ferrari will be able to improve their competitiveness, especially against the likes of McLaren.
“I’m hoping in the next race we somehow get a bit closer,” he said, before adding that he expected an interest weekend in Sakhir.
“It’s definitely going to be interesting. I just hope we’re a little bit closer.”
Ferrari “the fourth-fastest” team at the moment
He described Ferrari as being “probably the fourth-fastest” of the ten, and explained that they had been lacking performance compared to their rivals.
“I think we’re probably the fourth fastest clearly at the moment and I think we are a little bit off the other guys in terms of performance, downforce level wise.”
He added, “So we’ve got some work to do to close the gap.”
Hamilton further explained that the SF-25’s lack of pace could be seen from how Mercedes’ George Russell steadily closed the gap to Charles Leclerc in the latter stint of the 2025 F1 Japanese GP.
“No,” he said when asked if Mercedes had been faster than expected on the hard tyres, “I mean, Mercedes are faster than us, that’s why you saw them so close to Charles.”
“They just have more pace than us at the moment. When I was behind [the Mercedes], he was just so much quicker through certain parts of the circuit I couldn’t follow.”
Hamilton has “really great relationship” with new race engineer, Adami
Despite speculation that Hamilton’s performance has been affected by poor communication between him and the Ferrari pit-wall, especially new race engineer Riccardo Adami, Hamilton described his communication with Adami as “great.”
“It’s been good, yeah. It’s been great,” he replied when asked about the back-and-forth between him and Adami.
When asked if it was “weird” hearing a different voice on the radio after so many years with Peter “Bono” Bonnington at Mercedes, Hamilton replied, “No, it’s not weird at all.”
He explained that he had developed a “really great” working relationship with Adami, and praised his race engineer and the rest of his team for “doing a fantastic job”.
“I’ve got a really great relationship with Ricciardo. He’s doing a fantastic job, as are the rest of the guys. I think this was a much calmer time for us as we’re knowing each other more.”
Ferrar have “a lot of work” ahead to close gap to the top teams
Despite his challenges at the 2025 F1 Japanese GP, Hamilton is optimistic as looks ahead to the rest of the season, including the upcoming Bahrain GP. He explained that the team would work “slowly progress” the SF-25, and stated that he looked forward to seeing how their upgrades would compare to those introduced by their rivals.
“Well, I mean we will slowly progress the car. It’ll be interesting to see when people get upgrades over the season.”
“We’ve got a lot of work to be able to close the gap to the top cars, the top guys. They’ve probably got three- or four-tenths on us, so we’ve got a lot of work to bring upgrades for them.”
When asked if Ferrari has an upgrade package planned for Bahrain, however, Hamilton replied, “That I don’t know.”
