{"id":175424,"date":"2025-06-11T10:37:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T10:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/175424\/"},"modified":"2025-06-11T10:37:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T10:37:09","slug":"lewis-hamilton-deserves-eighth-title-as-fia-steward-makes-surprise-intervention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/175424\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton ‘deserves eighth title’ as FIA steward makes surprise intervention"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lewis Hamilton may \u201calready\u201d be thinking of retiring from Formula 1 after a difficult start to the F1 2025 season with Ferrari.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That is the claim of Derek Warwick, the active FIA steward, who believes the former Mercedes driver \u201cdeserves\u201d to win a record eighth World Championship.<\/p>\n

Could Lewis Hamilton just give up and walk away from Ferrari?<\/p>\n

Hamilton arrived at Ferrari last winter with hopes of ending his extended search for a record eighth World Championship.<\/p>\n

Yet despite converting pole position into victory in the China sprint race in March, the former Mercedes driver has struggled for pace alongside new team-mate Charles Leclerc.<\/p>\n

Hamilton has finished no higher than fourth on a Sunday in Ferrari colours, with Leclerc claiming all of the team\u2019s three podium finishes so far in F1 2025.<\/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

Warwick, who most recently appeared as a steward at last month\u2019s Miami Grand Prix, believes Hamilton may have underestimated the challenge of joining a new team after 12 seasons with Mercedes between 2013 and 2024.<\/p>\n

And he fears Hamilton will walk away from F1 entirely if he does not find a breakthrough soon.<\/p>\n

Warwick told a gambling platform: \u201cI don\u2019t know why Lewis Hamilton can\u2019t get going in a Ferrari. I think that\u2019s an enigma really.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we all saw him moving to Ferrari as a great opportunity to win his eighth world title.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe car is not to his liking at the minute. Most critics will say he\u2019s a seven-times World Champion, 105 grand prix wins, surely you adapt to the car you\u2019ve got, because Charles has.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut for some reason he can\u2019t get used to it. I think people underestimate, including Lewis, maybe how difficult it is to join a new team.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow to get used to their systems, their debriefs, getting them to understand what you want and vice versa.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the most important thing on the car is probably the steering wheel because there are so many different adjustments you can do to the steering wheel, maybe he hasn\u2019t quite got on top of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo I want Lewis to win races and challenge for the World Championship?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. I think he deserves it. I think he deserves that eighth world title.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to happen this year. And I think if it carries on the way it is at the minute, I suspect he\u2019s already thinking of stopping.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see him running half a second behind Charles, and also running in sixth, seventh and eighth place.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s had enough of that for the last three years, with Mercedes, so he needs to get a bit of confidence back.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn China, when he won the sprint race, I thought that was the turning point, but the car\u2019s still not to his liking.\u201d<\/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

Warwick\u2019s latest comments come after he defended the FIA\u2019s decision to impose<\/a> a 10-second penalty and three penalty points on Verstappen for his ugly clash with Mercedes driver George Russell at the recent Spanish Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Nico Rosberg, the 2016 World Champion and former Mercedes driver, led calls for Verstappen to be disqualified on the spot<\/a> for the collision at Turn 5, claiming the World Champion appeared to \u201cram [Russell] full on.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Warwick has defended the punishment handed out to Verstappen, describing it as the \u201cperfect\u201d course of action to the Red Bull driver\u2019s \u201cabsolutely wrong\u201d act.<\/p>\n

He said:\u00a0\u201cI think everyone has to realise that if you are a driver who is used to winning like Max, it is very difficult when things go against you in a race that on paper, with three stops, looks like you could win.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we all know he\u2019s a winner.<\/p>\n

\u201cShould he have done what he did, in Turn 5 with George Russell? Absolutely not. Did he get a penalty for that? Yes.<\/p>\n

\u201cSebastian Vettel was once given a 10-second drive-through penalty in Baku after an incident with Lewis Hamilton [in 2017], but he deliberately drove into Lewis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhereas if you watch this video, it seems to me that although he dove in, he then did turn away from George, but momentum pushed him against George.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is absolutely wrong and the FIA was right to give him a penalty.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think many people would say he should have been given a suspension as an example to young karters, and they are probably right, but I think the penalty was perfect.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to look at each incident individually. This is not what I like to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warwick\u2019s comments are likely to reignite the debate over a conflict of interest among FIA stewards following a high-profile case involving Johnny Herbert, the three-time F1 race winner, last season.<\/p>\n

Herbert left his role as an FIA steward ahead of the F1 2025 season after repeatedly criticising Verstappen<\/a> on gambling platforms last year.<\/p>\n

Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the president of the FIA, acknowledged earlier this year that Herbert\u2019s position<\/a> in the stewards\u2019 room had become untenable alongside his media work.<\/p>\n

Read next:\u00a0Hamilton podium? Verstappen gets banned? Bold predictions for Canadian GP<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton may \u201calready\u201d be thinking of retiring from Formula 1 after a difficult start to the F1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,997,4347,707,4200,225,998,12,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-175424","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-fia","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-home-page","14":"tag-lewis-hamilton","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114664298468546517","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175424","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=175424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}