Lewis Hamilton has reacted to his disappointing debut for Ferrari, after a poor strategy call led to a P10 finish at the Australian Grand Prix.
In the opening race of the 2025 Formula 1 season, the Brit was leading for a short period during a chaotic rain shower, but lost out when he moved onto intermediates.
The rain hit Albert Park with just ten laps to go, but Ferrari opted to leave both Hamilton and Charles Leclerc out on dry tyres, in the hope of gaining track position
However as the track got wetter, it became clear the gamble wasn’t going to pay off, and a late pit stop subjected both drivers to the lower regions of the points.
Hamilton left stranded by Ferrari
The Hamilton-Ferrari partnership was always going to have teething issues, but the seven time world champion was left frustrated by the weather reports he received from his new team.
“I think it was just lacking that bit of information at the end,” Hamilton told Sky Sports F1.
“Unfortunately they said it was just a short shower and the rest of the track was dry so I was like, ‘I’m gonna stick it out as long as I can. I can keep it on the track.’
“They didn’t say more (rain) was coming, and then all of a sudden more came.“
There was more moments of tension on the radio throughout the race, as Hamilton told his race engineer, Riccardo Adami, to ‘leave me to it’ on multiple occasions.
However, despite the irritated tone over the radio, Hamilton was full of praise for Adami after the chequered flag.
“I think Riccardo did a really good job,” said Hamilton.
“I think we’re learning about each other bit by bit, I’m generally not one that likes a lot of information in the race.
“After this we’ll download, we’ll go through all the comments, things I said, and vice versa.
“He did his best today and we’ll move forward.”
Debut went worse than Hamilton thought it would
Even before the strategy blunder, Hamilton was having a tough day at the office, stuck behind the Williams of Alex Albon for the majority of the race.
The former Mercedes man admitted that he’d expected his Ferrari debut to go a lot better, he said: “It was very tricky and went a lot worse than I thought it would go,”
“The car was really, really hard to drive today, for me, I’m just grateful I kept it out of the wall because that’s where it wanted to go most of the time.
“I didn’t have any confidence today in it unfortunately, so I’m going to make some changes next week.“
