Lewis Hamilton has reiterated that he is “here to win” at Ferrari, with the Briton stating that he “refuses” to miss out on winning a title as previous champions have done at the Scuderia.
After a long and successful partnership with Mercedes – which yielded numerous championships – Hamilton switched to Ferrari for 2025 and, at the halfway point of the season, sits in sixth place of the Drivers’ Standings, his best result so far being a P4.
Signs of progress have emerged during recent races – with Hamilton just missing out on a podium last time out at Silverstone – but the seven-time World Champion is hoping for more, having spent time at the squad’s Maranello headquarters in the two weeks since his home event while the SF-25 will also run a revised rear suspension at this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix.
“I was at the factory, a couple of days in each week,” Hamilton explained ahead of the event at Spa-Francorchamps. “We did preparation for… naturally you’re going over where we were in the previous race, things that we need to change.
“I hold a lot of meetings so I’ve called on lots of meetings with the heads of the team, so I’ve sat with John [Elkann], Benedetto [Vigna] and Fred [Vasseur], several meetings.
“I’ve sat with the head of our car development, with Loic [Serra], but also with the heads of different departments, talking about the engine for next year, talking about front suspension for next year, talking about rear suspension for next year, things that you want, issues that you have with the car.
“I’ve sent documents, I’ve done [that] through the year. After the first few races I did a full document for the team, then during this break I had another two documents that I sent in and so they would come in and want to address those.
“Some of it’s structural, adjustments that we need to make as a team in order to get better in all the areas that we want to improve, and then the other one was really about the car, the current issues that I have with this car, some things that you do want to take onto next year’s car and some that you need to work on and change for next year.
“[I] tried the 2026 car for the first time and started work on that. The engineers come to the room and you sit and debrief with every single one of them, so a big, big push. And otherwise [I’ve] just been training, maybe a little bit too hard!”
Pushed on why he felt the need to provide documents to the team, Hamilton explained his determination to succeed as a Ferrari driver.
“The reason for it is that I see a huge amount of potential within this team,” the 40-year-old said. “The passion, nothing comes close to that. It is a huge organisation and there’s a lot of moving parts, and not all of them firing on all the cylinders they need to be.
“That’s ultimately why the team’s not had the success that I think it deserves. I feel that it’s my job to challenge absolutely every area, to challenge everybody in the team, particularly the guys at the top who are making the decisions.
“If you look at the team over the last 20 years, they’ve had amazing drivers. They had Kimi [Raikkonen], they had Fernando [Alonso], they had Sebastian [Vettel], all World Champions; however, they didn’t win a World Champion[ship], and for me, I refuse for that to be the case, so I’m going the extra mile.
“Obviously I’m very fortunate to have had experiences in two other great teams, and whilst things are for sure going to be different because there’s a different culture and everything, I think sometimes if you take the same path all the time you get the same results, so I’m just challenging certain things.
“They’ve been incredibly responsive. They’ve been improving in so many areas, in marketing, through everything we’ve been continuously delivering for sponsors, the way the engineers continue to work.
“There’s lots of work and improvements to be made, but [they’ve been] very responsive and I guess ultimately trying to create allies within the organisation and get them geed up, get them pushing.
“I’m here to win, and I don’t have as much time as this one here [Kimi Antonelli] so it’s crunch time. For me I truly believe in the potential of this team. I really believe that they can win multiple World Championships. They already have an amazing legacy, but during my time that’s my sole goal.”