Hamilton at Ferrari: the numbers behind a difficult first year

A year into his Scuderia adventure, Hamilton trails his team-mate on nearly every measurable metric. The data tells a clear story — and raises one question the 2026 season will answer.

Lewis Hamilton in the Ferrari SF-25, 2025 Formula 1 season. Image: placeholder — replace with licensed 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.

Qualifying

Leclerc outqualified Hamilton in 19 of 24 rounds across the season. In the 15 sessions where both drivers set a timed Q3 lap, Leclerc's average advantage was 0.131 seconds — consistent across the calendar rather than concentrated in a handful of circuits.

The round-by-round picture shows Hamilton performing closer to Leclerc's level at street circuits and high-downforce configurations. Higher-speed layouts tended to stretch the gap. No single weekend tells the story; the pattern held across the season.

The Leclerc benchmark

To assess what Hamilton's qualifying gap represents, it is worth examining how Leclerc's previous team-mate compared in the same car. Sainz spent four seasons alongside Leclerc at Ferrari before moving to Williams at the end of 2024. Our analysis covers his final two seasons — the most directly comparable to Hamilton's first.

In 2023, Sainz qualified an average of 0.112 seconds behind Leclerc. By 2024, that figure had fallen to 0.031 seconds. In races, Leclerc finished ahead in 9 of 14 comparable rounds in 2023 and 12 of 20 in 2024 — though Sainz won twice in that second season and their average finishing positions across the year, Leclerc at P3.91 and Sainz at P4.05, were the closest the partnership produced.

Race day

Hamilton's race results in 2025 are stark on the headline figures. Leclerc finished ahead in 18 of 21 comparable races, averaging P5.1 against Hamilton's P7.0. Leclerc took seven podiums. Hamilton took none.

Three of Hamilton's classified starts came from penalty grid positions — Monaco, Belgium and Monza — which inflate his places-gained figures. 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 frequently managing from further back on the grid, which the raw finishing position figures do not separate from outright pace.

On position-derived points — sprint results and fastest lap bonuses stripped out — Leclerc scored 225 to Hamilton's 135 across the season.* Three non-finishes — Netherlands, Brazil, and China — are excluded from the comparable-race analysis.

Hamilton and Sainz against Leclerc

Measured against Leclerc across four metrics — qualifying pace, qualifying head-to-head, race head-to-head and finishing position — Hamilton's first season at Ferrari compares unfavourably with either of Sainz's two seasons in the same car. On three of the four measures, Hamilton's 2025 figures sit below Sainz's 2023 baseline.

The one area where Hamilton compares more favourably is race-day recovery — places gained from wherever he starts. That reflects his ability to manage tyres and overtake, but also the circumstances that regularly put him further back on the grid. The two are difficult to separate cleanly.

A note on 2026

Two races is not a sample. But Hamilton's average Q3 gap to Leclerc across the opening two rounds stands at 0.069 seconds — below his 2025 average of 0.131. In Australia, Leclerc finished third and Hamilton fourth. In China, Hamilton took third — his first podium in Ferrari colours — with Leclerc fourth. Whether the early signs reflect genuine progress or the particular characteristics of two circuits, the remaining rounds of 2026 will settle.

Verdict

The 2025 season was, by the data, a difficult year for Hamilton at Ferrari. Leclerc outqualified him consistently, finished ahead in the overwhelming majority of comparable races, and did so with a regularity that ran through the season rather than clustering in a few weekends.

What the data does not resolve is whether the gap is structural or circumstantial — a first year at a new team under a specific set of regulations, or something more persistent. Sainz's experience in the same car over two seasons provides a reference point, not a forecast.

What 2026 will settle is whether that gap — in qualifying pace, in race results, in the arithmetic of finishing positions — is as wide as 2025 suggested.