Has Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari Move Boosted The Team’s Global Profile?

After six Formula One titles with Mercedes and one with McLaren, part way through the 2024 F1 season it was announced that Lewis Hamilton would be joining Ferrari for 2025. With the season underway, how has the move gone so far?

Hamilton’s 2024 season

Hamilton’s last season with Mercedes was relatively unsuccessful. He finished 7th in the Driver’s Championship, with five podium finishes (compared to six the year before).

Early last season, Hamilton said, “I mean this is the worst start to a season I’ve ever had”. He was asked if it was worse than 2022 and 2023. “Oh yeah, for sure, and it’s worse than 2009 I think!” 

At the Australian Grand Prix, Hamilton retired on Lap 17 with a mechanical issue.

After the race in Monaco, he said he expected it would be difficult to outqualify his Mercedes teammate George Russell “because he has the upgraded component” (per Sky Sports). 

It wasn’t all bad news in 2024. Hamilton won the Belgian Grand Prix and the British Grand Prix. He was 3rd and 2nd on the grid for those races, but was not able to start in such a good position after those wins.

Boosted social media

Despite the disappointing season, Hamilton’s start at Ferrari has dominated F1 headlines.

Hamilton has been called “unquestionably one of the best to ever race in F1, if not the best”, so it’s no surprise his move has been big news.

Sports Business Journal has reported that Ferrari is “counting on” the move to “help drive interest in the 2025 campaign.”

It appears to be working. Endeavor Analytics said that “in the 10 days starting Jan. 20, Ferrari’s team was mentioned in 1.2 million posts on social media, an increase of 7% versus the average for an entire given month in 2024 and more than seven full months’ worth last year” (per SBJ). 

The Scuderia Ferrari team have been focusing on Hamilton with their social media content. A January post on X, captioned “Thanks for waiting”, got 1.8 million views and 13,000 retweets.

Sports betting companies have also benefited from the interest in Hamilton’s switch to Ferrari. Several articles have focused on Hamilton to drive engagement. The official F1 website’s pre-season betting guide had Hamilton at 19.0 – the same odds as Russell. The 10CRIC online betting app for seamless wagering offers sports fans the chance to bet on other sports including cricket, football, and tennis.

The 2025 season so far

It’s early yet, but Hamilton currently sits in 9th, six places below Russell.

Great Britain’s Lando Norris tops the leaderboard, having won in Australia before finishing 2nd in China. He was beaten by his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri.  

Hamilton finished 10th in Australia. Then he finished 6th in China, but was disqualified after one of his skid blocks was found to be less than the required thickness. 

Back in 2023, Hamilton was disqualified from the US Grand Prix for a similar reason.

His Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc was also disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix due to his car being underweight. Alpine’s Pierre Gasly was disqualified for the same breach.

Hamilton’s titles and Ferrari memories

Hamilton’s championship titles came in 2008, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, winning the fastest lap award in five of those years.

He shares Michael Schumacher’s record of seven titles. Hamilton drove Schumacher’s car in video games as a kid.

Hamilton told Time in a recent interview that the Ferrari in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is “the ultimate retirement car”. He said, “I can just see myself with Roscoe, him with a scarf and goggles in the seat next to me, driving down the PCH.” (Roscoe is Hamilton’s bulldog who also eats a vegan diet.)

During his time at McLaren and Mercedes, Hamilton enjoyed “cordial relations” (per Time) with Ferrari. He said “ciao” to the mechanics, and in 2018 met Ferrari chairman John Elkann. Both parties said they wanted Hamilton to drive for Ferrari. 

But by the end of 2020, he had won four successive titles with Mercedes. “If I’m really honest, I had accepted the fact that I’m probably not going to drive for Ferrari,” Hamilton told Time. “I was OK with that.”

He wasn’t far off retiring from racing after the 2021 season. After the controversial season finale in Abu Dhabi, when Verstappen overtook Hamilton in the last lap, Hamilton was close to quitting. He carried on, but did not win a race in 2022 or 2023. 

Past his best?

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said Hamilton’s move to Ferrari “helps us because it avoids the moment where we need to tell the sport’s most iconic driver that we want to stop”, according to a 2024 book, Inside Mercedes F1: Life in the Fast Lane. “We’re in a sport where cognitive sharpness is extremely important, and I believe everyone has a shelf life.”

Hamilton is apparently unbothered by the comment, pointing to over-40 athletes Tom Brady and LeBron James. He told Time, “Don’t ever compare me to anybody else” and said, “I’m the first and only Black driver that’s ever been in this sport. I’m built different. I’ve been through a lot. I’ve had my own journey. You can’t compare me to another 40-year-old, past or present, Formula One driver in history. Because they are nothing like me. I’m hungry, driven, don’t have a wife and kids. I’m focused on one thing, and that’s winning. That’s my No. 1 priority.”

2026?

It may be too early to say, but with Hamilton having significant ground to make up, perhaps a 2026 title is a more realistic goal.

According to oddschecker, Norris is the bookies’ 2025 favourite, with Piastri and Max Verstappen following. Hamilton is fourth favourite, narrowly ahead of Russell. 

In other F1 news, Sergio Perez may return in 2026. He left the championship after the 2024 season but recently revealed he has been approached by multiple teams. 

Perez told F1.com, “If I find a project that motivates me fully to come back, where the team believe in me and where they appreciate my career, my experience and everything I can bring to a team, it would be very attractive to consider it”.

1978 world champion Mario Andretti is a Cadillac director and has said Perez “could be an option, of course.”