The first day of Formula 1 pre-season testing offers no more than a baseline reference for the week but judging from trackside Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari have work to do.
Standing on the exit of Turn 10 affords a good view looking back as the cars appear through the Turn 9 left-hander then try to scrub off a lot of speed for the second, tighter left as the track falls away.
It is a favoured vantage point of this writer, and with Edd Straw deployed elsewhere around the track – inside Turn 4, and also looking towards Turn 8 – we have started to piece together a picture of how the 2025 cars look on-track.
Hamilton was among the more prominent runners throughout the first half-day of running, which presented a decent opportunity to establish a baseline of how the car looked and how he looked in it over more than three hours spent trackside.
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Initially, the Ferrari left a better first impression than most, although the Red Bull – on a harder compound – was probably more eye-catching for how metronomic Liam Lawson looked through Turn 10.
Hamilton did not have any major dramas across the three runs of varying length and programme we saw: four push laps in a five-lap run, push-cool-push on another, and back-to-back push laps later on.
There was more variation in his entry to 10, which could be him attacking the corner differently or taking slightly different lines after Turn 9 as he adjusted to the feeling in the car. One lap he would ride the inside kerb, another he would avoid it entirely, another he would take a big bite.
This may support the likelihood that it was Hamilton trying different approaches as it looked a lot tidier the more times the Ferrari came through. At its smoothest, Hamilton’s trajectory through the corner looked as sweet as Lawson’s. It’s just that Lawson had a lot less variation lap to lap in a Red Bull that, it must be said, was nice and responsive on the front out of the box.
However, the more the first half-day progressed, the more of a challenge it looked. There was a lock-up into the slow Turn 8 hairpin, a wide moment through Turn 10, and Hamilton also had a small snap exiting Turn 4 that meant he dropped a wheel on the gravel.
And in the final hour or so it was noticeable that Hamilton had a hard time getting the front end to bite for Turn 10 when he attacked the entry more – although not as dramatically as Kimi Antonelli who had a few big apex misses in his Mercedes that culminated in a huge lock-up (pictured below), coincidentally when he was next on track after Hamilton’s Ferrari.
Extreme behaviour is always more noticeable trackside. It’s much easier to work out a car that doesn’t look right, or when a driver has overcooked a corner entry, than it is to tell the difference between cars that will ultimately be a couple of tenths apart with the fuel taken out and soft tyres bolted on.
Trackside impressions, like laptimes, can also change with a set-up tweak, new tyres, a different fuel load, or weather conditions. In the first stint trackside the gusts of wind were noticeable, producing a headwind into Turn 10 but a crosswind for the preceding Turn 9. Later it felt like more of a crosswind for Turn 10 and a headwind for Turn 9
All this is to say, this is very much a first impression and treating it as anything too enlightening about Hamilton’s adaptation would be too big a leap.
It looked unremarkable, with at least as much refinement as you would expect for the first runs of testing proper. And the car behaviour seen trackside would have been suboptimal for tyre usage, and therefore been exaggerated over a longer stint.
It may just as likely be a sign of Hamilton finding the limit as it is of car weaknesses being exposed or Hamilton needing more time to adapt. The rest of the week will help answer that more convincingly.
