Lewis Hamilton has admitted the pressure is on as he prepares to make his debut as a Ferrari driver at the team\u2019s home race in the Italian Grand Prix this weekend, having unceremoniously crashed out of the Dutch GP on Sunday after an unforced error.<\/p>\n
The seven-time world champion suffered an unusual exit at Zandvoort<\/a> as he went wide on the painted surface outside turn three, made slippery by light rain. He lost the rear and could not hold the car, which slid into the barriers, ending his race.<\/p>\n It was far from the fresh start after the summer break the British driver had hoped for after he has endured a difficult debut year with Ferrari<\/a>. The car has been off the pace and adapting to a new team has proved difficult for Hamilton, as he admitted after his exit at Zandvoort.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s obviously a huge amount of pressure on us as a team, more so for me now,\u201d he said. \u201cI haven\u2019t had a good season. Next week, we\u2019ll just try to absorb all the energy from the fans.\u201d<\/p>\n He did maintain that he remained confident and felt the weekend in the Netherlands had been a step forward for him and the team after he had been left disenchanted after a series of poor results before F1\u2019s summer break.<\/p>\n Lewis Hamilton said after the Dutch GP that \u2018we\u2019ll just try to absorb all the energy from the fans\u2019 at Ferrari\u2019s home race next Sunday. Photograph: Marcel van Dorst\/DeFodi Images\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m fine, I feel fine mentally, I\u2019ve felt lots of positives,\u201d he said. \u201cI felt I was making progress, I was catching the car ahead. It\u2019s tough to have a result like that but I\u2019ve been racing for so long I\u2019ve had God knows how many races and you can probably count on one hand that sort of incident.\u201d<\/p>\n However, he already faces a setback for Monza, with a five-place grid penalty for the race imposed for failing to slow sufficiently for yellow flags on his reconnaissance lap to the grid before Sunday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n The Ferrari team principal, Fred Vasseur, maintained his driver was still feeling optimistic. \u201cWe discussed after the race \u2013 he was much more positive than the last four or five events,\u201d Vasseur said. \u201cFor sure, he lost the car but the mood was positive, because I think he can take a lot of positives from the weekend and build up the confidence for Monza.\u201d<\/p>\n A difficult weekend for Ferrari, who are in a tight fight with Mercedes for second place in the championship \u2013 the Italian team are just 12 points ahead of third \u2013 was compounded when Charles Leclerc clashed with Mercedes\u2019 Kimi Antonelli, and the Monegasque driver spun into the barriers, ending his race. Antonelli had been going up the inside as Leclerc was on the racing line when they clipped wheels on lap 53 and as a result the Italian was given a 10-second penalty.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Hamilton had said before the weekend he wanted to start to try to enjoy driving for Ferrari after a trying time and all the scrutiny around his move to the Scuderia. Vasseur insisted that he felt his team was on course to potentially bring a smile to the driver\u2019s face.<\/p>\n \u201cTo enjoy it, it\u2019s largely a matter of results, confidence, pace and the fact that you are in the game,\u201d he said on Sunday. \u201cI think, honestly, today is why Lewis had the perception that today was much better, even if the outcome is not.\u201d<\/p>\n After the race in Zandvoort, the Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, also confirmed George Russell would remain with the team for 2026, alongside Antonelli, <\/strong>although the British driver\u2019s contract has yet to be signed. \u201cI always say there\u2019s not going to be any big news because we\u2019re doing this. We\u2019re continuing with both of them, of course,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n With Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen having already confirmed he would remain with the team for 2026, there was little doubt Mercedes would stick with Russell, though the final details of his contract and its length remain to be confirmed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton has admitted the pressure is on as he prepares to make his debut as a Ferrari…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-390022","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115130747142044276","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390022","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=390022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}