Lewis Hamilton wants to have “fun” during the remainder of the 2025 F1 season after admitting to feeling pressure during his first campaign with Ferrari.
Seven-time world champion Hamilton has endured a challenging debut season with Ferrari after completing his blockbuster switch from Mercedes over the winter.
Hamilton has struggled to adapt to Ferrari’s SF-25 car and goes into this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix without having scored a grand prix podium in his first 14 races for the team.
Aside from the rare high of claiming a sprint pole and victory in just his second competitive outing for Ferrari in China, Hamilton has largely cut a downbeat and frustrated figure.
Hamilton’s spiral hit a new low in Hungary, where he labelled himself as “useless” and suggested Ferrari should “change driver” after qualifying and finishing 12th at one of his best tracks.
But Hamilton has returned from the three-week summer break refreshed and motivated to turn things around, and is determined to enjoy the remaining 10 races.
“I feel determined to and motivated to, yes,” Hamilton told media including Crash.net in Zandvoort on Thursday when asked if he is confident about turning his season around.
“We’re going to work hard, keep our heads down, try to change a few things in our approach and start to enjoy ourselves.
“There’s been so much pressure in this first half of the season, it’s not been the most enjoyable. So I think just remembering that we love what we do. We’re all in this together, and try to have some fun.”
Hamilton’s ‘pressure’ remark was picked up upon and he was pressed to clarify what he meant.
“Just ultimately to get on top of everything, the amount of work we have, all the new partners, the amount of shoots we’ve done, getting integrated into a new team and it’s a big, big team,” the 40-year-old Briton explained.
“It’s the biggest brand in our sport as well. So the combination of all those things, it’s been a lot.”
Hamilton then expanded about his pledge to have more fun in the rest of the season.
“I think [having fun] is probably the most important part because that’s the reason I got into this sport, because it was fun for me,” he said.
“I think for anyone in whatever career you are in, if you are not enjoying what you are doing, then why are you doing it?
“There can often be so much noise you can lose sight of what’s really important. That’s why I’m saying I really just want to get back to that enjoyment.
“I joined the team that I’ve always dreamed of driving for and there’s been so much noise around that it’s kind of clouded us from getting to enjoy it.
“Now it’s about moving those things aside and getting back to focus on the pure love of what we do.”
Lewis Hamilton ‘completely unplugged’ during break
Following a series of cryptic comments in Budapest, Hamilton kept a low profile over the summer break.
Hamilton said he “completely unplugged” and spent the time with family and friends.
“The good thing is when you get time to unplug, it’s a reset,” Hamilton explained.
“I had time to go through, this past week particularly, where we’ve been, things we want to improve on, processes, things we want to try and change for moving forward.
“I see a lot of potential. There’s a lot of positives to take from the first half, even though it didn’t look necessarily the most positive. There’s lots of positives to take from it, which we’ll take forward and try and build on that.”
And Hamilton is more upbeat about the final 10 races of the season and firmly believes Ferrari are “going in the right direction”.
“I think we’ve made a lot of progress and I think we are progressing as a team,” he added.
“We are going in the right direction and the new components that came at Spa, I think we’ve started to be able to fine tune them. Bit by bit, race by race, we’re starting to extract more from them so I’m hoping this weekend maybe more.”