Hamilton at Ferrari: what the numbers actually show

A year into his Scuderia adventure, Hamilton trails his team-mate on nearly every measurable metric. But one driver's trajectory suggests the story is more complicated than the headlines imply.

Lewis Hamilton in the Ferrari SF-25, 2025 Formula 1 season. | Replace with licensed image credit

When Lewis Hamilton left Mercedes for Ferrari, the move was immediately cast in the language of legacy. The seven-time world champion, joining the most storied team in the sport. The narrative was irresistible. The data, twelve months on, is rather more instructive.

Hamilton's first season in Maranello did not go as hoped. Charles Leclerc outqualified him in 19 of 24 rounds and finished ahead in 18 of 21 comparable races. He scored no podiums. Leclerc took seven. The gap, across both qualifying and race performance, was not a matter of interpretation — it was a number. The more interesting question, and the one this analysis attempts to answer, is whether that number means what it appears to mean.

Qualifying: the analysis

Our qualifying analysis focuses on Q3 sessions across the full 2025 season — the point in a race weekend where both drivers are expected to be at their absolute limit, with the car optimised and no fuel-load considerations in play. We looked at every round where both Hamilton and Leclerc set a timed Q3 lap, giving us 15 comparable sessions.

Across those 15 sessions, Leclerc was faster by an average of 0.131 seconds. The overall qualifying head-to-head across the season stood at Leclerc 19, Hamilton 5. Round by round, the pattern was consistent rather than driven by a handful of outliers.

The per-race breakdown shows where the gap was widest and where Hamilton came closest. Several circuits — notably street tracks and high-downforce configurations — showed Hamilton performing nearer Leclerc's level. Others, particularly higher-speed layouts, saw the gap stretch.

Leclerc in context: the Sainz seasons

To understand what Hamilton's gap to Leclerc actually represents, it helps to look at how Leclerc's previous team-mate performed in the same car. Carlos Sainz spent several seasons alongside Leclerc at Ferrari before leaving for Williams at the end of 2024. We analyse his 2023 and 2024 seasons against Leclerc across the same qualifying and race metrics.

In 2023, Sainz qualified an average of 0.112 seconds behind Leclerc across comparable sessions. By 2024, that gap had closed to 0.031 seconds — a reduction of 0.081 seconds in a single season. Hamilton's 2025 gap of 0.131 seconds sits above Sainz's year-one starting point, which makes the trajectory question more pointed rather than less.

The trajectory matters. Sainz closed from a wider gap than Hamilton currently holds and, by his second season, was genuinely competitive with Leclerc across the majority of race weekends. Hamilton's Q3 deficit of 0.131 seconds sits between Sainz's year-one gap and his year-two gap — closer to the 2023 Sainz baseline than the 2024 one.

Race day: what the numbers tell us

Hamilton's race results in 2025 are stark on the headline figures. Leclerc ahead in 18 of 21 comparable races, averaging P5.1 against Hamilton's P7.0. Zero podiums for Hamilton, seven for Leclerc. On position-derived race points — stripping out sprint race bonuses and fastest lap points — Leclerc scored 225 to Hamilton's 135. A 90-point gap across 24 rounds.

Three adjustments are worth noting. Hamilton's three races from penalty grid positions — Monaco, Belgium and Monza — inflate his places-gained average. Across all classified starts he averaged +2.52 places gained per race; on clean-grid starts that falls to approximately +1.3. Leclerc averaged +0.43. Hamilton was also often managing from further back the grid, which the raw finishing position figures do not separate from outright pace.

Three non-finishes — Netherlands DNF, Brazil DNF, and China DSQ (both drivers disqualified for separate technical infringements) — are excluded from the comparable-race analysis.

Putting it all together

Placing all three seasons side by side — Sainz 2023, Sainz 2024, Hamilton 2025 — produces the clearest view of where Hamilton stands relative to Leclerc. Across four metrics, all normalised to a 0–100 closeness score where 100 means matching Leclerc exactly, Hamilton's year-one performance sits below Sainz's 2023 baseline on three of the four.

The one area where Hamilton compares more favourably is race-day recovery — moving through the field from wherever he starts. That reflects both his ability to manage tyres and overtake, and the circumstances that put him further back in the first place. The two are difficult to separate cleanly.

Season momentum

The cumulative points chart below tells the story of how the gap built and where it stabilised. Hamilton briefly halted Leclerc's progress at Great Britain — where Leclerc's unusual P14 from a P6 grid start kept his tally flat — but Leclerc re-established the gap from Hungary onward and never relinquished it.

A note on 2026

Two races is not a sample. But the early 2026 data is worth flagging: Hamilton's average Q3 gap to Leclerc across the opening two rounds stands at 0.069 seconds — noticeably closer than his 2025 average of 0.131 seconds. Whether that reflects the new regulations, a fuller winter of car development, or simply two circuits that suit his driving style is too early to say. It is directional, nothing more.

Verdict

The 2025 season was, by the data, a difficult year for Hamilton at Ferrari. Leclerc outqualified him across the season, finished ahead in the overwhelming majority of comparable races, and did so with a consistency that ran through the year. The gap was real and it was wide.

What the data does not settle is whether it is permanent. The Sainz precedent suggests gaps of this magnitude are not fixed — Sainz closed from 0.112 seconds to 0.031 seconds in a single season. Hamilton enters 2026 with a full year's knowledge of the car, the engineers and the circuits. The early qualifying sessions this year suggest a smaller gap than his 2025 average. Two races carries almost no statistical weight, but the direction is the right one. The benchmark is set. The trajectory is the only thing that matters now.