{"id":146025,"date":"2025-05-31T05:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T05:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/146025\/"},"modified":"2025-05-31T05:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T05:44:08","slug":"nico-rosberg-delivers-worrying-lewis-hamilton-theory-over-f1-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/146025\/","title":{"rendered":"Nico Rosberg delivers worrying Lewis Hamilton theory over F1 decline"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lewis Hamilton\u2019s start to life at Ferrari in F1 2025 has been a \u201ccontinuation\u201d of his difficult final season with Mercedes in 2024.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That is the opinion of Hamilton\u2019s former Mercedes team-mate and Sky F1 pundit Nico Rosberg, who fears time has finally caught up with the seven-time World Champion.<\/p>\n

Nico Rosberg fears Lewis Hamilton\u2019s struggles \u2018age related\u2019<\/p>\n

Despite winning two races in his final season with Mercedes last year, Hamilton was heavily beaten in qualifying conditions by emerging team-mate George Russell.<\/p>\n

It prompted Hamilton to confess that he is \u201cnot fast anymore\u201d at the penultimate race of 2024 in Qatar, just weeks before he arrived at Ferrari on a lucrative multi-year contract.<\/p>\n

Hamilton\u2019s struggles have persisted despite his change of surroundings with the 40-year-old outqualified by new team-mate Charles Leclerc at seven of the eight races held so far this season.<\/p>\n

Lewis Hamilton vs Charles Leclerc: Ferrari head-to-head scores for F1 2025<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n

Rosberg famously defeated Hamilton to lift the World Championship at the 2016 season finale in Abu Dhabi before announcing his retirement from F1 five days later.<\/p>\n

And the German believes the \u201cdip\u201d Hamilton suffered towards the end of his Mercedes career has shown no signs of being resolved so far at Ferrari.<\/p>\n

He told Sky F1: \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit of a continuation of the form from last year, where already there was a bit of a dip there and George had the upper hand and was beating him at Mercedes and also finished ahead in the points.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd now it\u2019s continued that a little bit. Just a little bit lacking here and there, especially in ultimate pace in qualifying.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know Charles is an incredible qualifier, so Lewis has to fight a little bit more there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked why Hamilton\u2019s struggles have persisted at Mercedes, Rosberg suggested that that the \u201canswer\u201d is likely that his former team-mate\u2019s age is starting to have an impact on his performance by making him \u201ca little bit slower.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThat\u2019s a good question.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy answer would be: even if he\u2019s the greatest of all time, at some point you are going to get a little bit slower and that\u2019s age related.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when you\u2019re 40, it\u2019s going to happen sooner rather than later, so the question is whether that age has come where you start to get a little bit slower.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd even a tenth or something makes a huge difference in the sport, especially when you\u2019re up against some of the greatest from the new generation [like] Charles Leclerc, who is considered one of the absolute best qualifiers out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosberg\u2019s latest comments come after he expressed sympathy for Hamilton<\/a> on Friday at the Spanish Grand Prix, where he described the Ferrari SF-25 as \u201cthe worst\u201d car on the grid based on his impressions from watching trackside during FP2.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThe worst car is the Ferrari.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh my goodness! Poor Lewis Hamilton. That car is a handful. It has the biggest understeer and it has the biggest snap oversteer.<\/p>\n

\u201cLewis [had] a lot of understeer, then you can start to see the movement on the steering wheel.<\/p>\n

\u201cTurn 7, even on the entry, the rear is just so loose and snappy, so even on the entry Lewis had to fully steer out again to avoid binning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really feel for him at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamilton enters this weekend\u2019s Spanish Grand Prix on the back of a troubled race in Monaco, where he finished more than 51 seconds adrift of the race-winning McLaren of Lando Norris.<\/p>\n

A three-place grid penalty for impeding Max Verstappen, which saw him lose time behind Isack Hadjar\u2019s Racing Bull and Fernando Alonso\u2019s Aston Martin, partly explained Hamilton\u2019s massive deficit to the leaders.<\/p>\n

The #44 car also lost more time to the front runners, estimated by Ferrari to be around 10 seconds, in lapped traffic.<\/p>\n

More on Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari from PlanetF1.com<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49 Lewis Hamilton news<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49 Ferrari news<\/a><\/p>\n

Hamilton\u2019s relationship with race engineer Riccardo Adami came under heavy scrutiny in the aftermath of the Monaco Grand Prix following a series of awkward exchanges<\/a> between the pair over team radio.<\/p>\n

Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com on Thursday, however, Hamilton insisted that his relationship with Adami<\/a> remains healthy.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cOur relationship is great. No problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re constantly learning more and more about each other. We\u2019re constantly adapting to the way both of us like to work. He\u2019s worked with lots of different drivers before.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have any problems whatsoever.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of speculation, most of it is BS.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, we have a great relationship. He\u2019s been amazing to work with. He\u2019s a great guy, working so hard. We both are and we don\u2019t always get it right every weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo we have disagreements? Like everyone does in relationships, but we work through them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re both in it together. We both want to win a championship together. We\u2019re both working towards lifting the team up.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s just all noise and we don\u2019t really pay any attention to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it can continue if you want, but it doesn\u2019t make any difference to all the jobs that we\u2019re trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read next:\u00a0Ferrari make big changes to SF-25 front wing after new FIA tests<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton\u2019s start to life at Ferrari in F1 2025 has been a \u201ccontinuation\u201d of his difficult final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,997,707,4200,225,998,12,47791,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-146025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-ferrari","10":"tag-formula-1","11":"tag-formula1","12":"tag-home-page","13":"tag-lewis-hamilton","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-nico-rosberg","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114600860987925861","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}