The mountain Hamilton must climb to win over the tifosi in 2026

When Lewis Hamilton posed in front of a Ferrari F40 at Fiorano in January 2025, it felt like the beginning of something historic.

Wearing a long coat and an enigmatic smile, the seven-time world champion had finally arrived at the team that had always seemed his destiny. In Italy, the sense of anticipation was overwhelming.

But one year on, the romance has cooled.

The Ferrari SF-25 was never truly competitive, but it was Hamilton’s performances relative to team-mate Charles Leclerc that most disappointed.

Leclerc outqualified him 23 times to seven, finished the season with seven podiums to Hamilton’s none, and beat him by 86 points in the championship.

“He must climb an Everest this year,” Italian journalist Roberto Boccafogli writes in the latest issue of Motor Sport.

That Everest includes proving that, at 41, he can still define an era rather than simply survive in it.

As Boccafogli puts it, Hamilton was “clearly outclassed by his team-mate” and he notes that this is not an entirely unfamiliar story, with George Russell having beaten him in two of their three seasons together at Mercedes.

The tifosi, who had greeted Hamilton’s arrival with an outpouring of emotion not seen in Italy since F1’s great eras, gradually lost interest.

McLaren dominated and Ferrari struggled, and the question of how Hamilton and Leclerc were getting along was largely forgotten amid more pressing disappointments.