F1 2025 preview: could this be the best F1 season ever?

Sir Lewis Hamilton is a Ferrari driver. Seven times a world champion, 105 times a grand prix winner, all achieved with Mercedes power. Now, having just turned 40, he has taken a leap of faith to join an overseas team for the first time – and the most illustrious of them all.

Facing Leclerc, 13 years younger and in the prime of his life. Plus the voracious Italian media. Not to mention the rabid tifosi, who turned out in thousands to witness his first laps of Fiorano in January.

Of course, there are millions of reasons why Hamilton has signed for Ferrari – 100 million per year, if you believe some reports. But the pressure is off the scale. Still, he can handle it.

And the prize sits there, looking right at him: a record eighth world title. Some believe by moral rights it’s his already, that a race director breaking the FIA’s own rules on a whim amounted to night-time robbery back in 2021.

That sense of injustice still fuels Hamilton, and his chance of gaining retribution looked increasingly like a long shot if he stayed at Mercedes, after three seasons of mostly frustrating toil under these aerodynamic regulations.

But why Ferrari? Well, first, because it’s Ferrari. Few can resist Maranello, even 37 years after Enzo’s death. Yes, there’s the money. But there’s also the prestige, the challenge, that old red magic. We can take it as read, too, that Hamilton is fully pumped for what he faces.

He was convinced by his old Formula 3 and GP2 boss Frédéric Vasseur, for the past two  years the good-humoured, disarmingly effective team principal at Ferrari.

The Frenchman has quietly rubbed away at Ferrari’s crusty old blame culture, reduced the chaos and created a sense of methodical calm last seen during Ross Brawn’s watch back in the Michael Schumacher years.

For a man with a record 104 pole positions, it’s strange to suggest that Hamilton has lost his qualifying edge. But in their last year together, Russell comprehensively outperformed him on Saturdays.