{"id":173732,"date":"2025-06-10T19:35:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T19:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/173732\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T19:35:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T19:35:13","slug":"former-ferrari-chief-suggests-hamilton-signing-came-too-late","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/173732\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Ferrari chief suggests Hamilton signing came too late"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Ferrari<\/a> team principal Mattia Binotto has delivered his thoughts on Lewis Hamilton’s difficult start to the 2025 Formula 1 season.<\/p>\n

After moving from Mercedes<\/a> to the Scuderia for this year, the seven-time world champion has struggled to adapt to his Italian machinery. The now-Sauber CTO has highlighted his age as a contributing factor.<\/p>\n

Leading Ferrari from 2019 to 2022, the Swiss-Italian evaluated his former team’s performance as they currently sit second in the constructors’ standings. Despite only McLaren<\/a> being ahead of the team, things don’t look so positive on-track.<\/p>\n

“It’s clear that the performance on the track and the results are not good at the moment,” Binotto told Automoto.it.<\/a>\u00a0“However, I know every single member of that team very well and I know that they are good, strong and capable.<\/p>\n

\"Lewis <\/p>\n

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari SF-25, Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-25<\/p>\n

Photo by: Andy Hone \/ Motorsport Images<\/p>\n

“They will be able to improve the car and do well in the future. And I believe that Ferrari can get some satisfaction this year.”<\/p>\n

There’s a sense of disappointment around Ferrari, especially from Hamilton who is currently sixth in the drivers’ standings and seemingly finding the SF25 a difficult car to adapt to.<\/p>\n

While he secured a win at the Chinese sprint race, he’s yet to see a similar level of success. Leclerc sits fifth in the standings, 23 points ahead of his team-mate, but has still faced similar challenges despite consistently outperforming the Briton, especially in qualifying pace.<\/p>\n

\u201cHamilton is of a certain age,” Binotto said on the subject. “Ferrari took him when he was already at the end of his career. The ideal would have been to have him a few years earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the Spanish Grand Prix, Hamilton was frustrated with his performance.<\/p>\n

“It was not a great day. The strategy was good, the team did a great job. That’s it,” he said following the race. “I just had a really bad day and have nothing to say. It was a difficult day, there’s nothing else to add to it, it was terrible.”<\/p>\n

He later apologised to Sky Sports F1 reporter Rachel Brookes for being “so down,” according to her colleague and commentator David Croft<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Alex Harrington\n<\/p>\n

Formula 1\n<\/p>\n

Lewis Hamilton\n<\/p>\n

Mattia Binotto\n<\/p>\n

Ferrari\n<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has delivered his thoughts on Lewis Hamilton’s difficult start to the 2025…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,997,707,4200,998,71967,969,79,970,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-173732","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-lewis-hamilton","13":"tag-mattia-binotto","14":"tag-nosyndicate","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-trendingteam","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114660751781418463","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173732","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=173732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}