Lewis Hamilton is gearing up for the biggest week of his Ferrari Formula 1 move so far, including his first public appearance in red and the launch of the team's 2025 car.
While Hamilton has already been spotted testing at Fiorano in Italy, and has driven at Barcelona too, his roll out at the F175 launch event on Tuesday will be his first formal engagement as a Ferrari driver - and will be the first time we have heard him speak.
When the curtain comes down at the O2 Arena in London, Hamilton, team-mate Charles Leclerc and team principal Fred Vasseur will jet off back to Italy for the launch and shakedown of the new SF-25 on Wednesday morning.
It has already been a whirlwind start to the year for Hamilton and, while he has not spoken about things yet, an early picture has been pieced together of what has been going on behind the scenes in recent weeks and what it means for the season ahead.
And all the indications point to Hamilton being in a totally different frame of mind to the end of last year, when a difficult campaign with Mercedes left him battling some self-doubts and questions over whether he was still fast.
Getting embedded inside Ferrari
It should never be underestimated how big a challenge it is for a driver to switch teams, especially in modern F1.
It's not just a case of getting used to a few new controls, and an alternative design philosophy of a car that handles in a different way.
Drivers need to get used to new ways of working, meet and greet hundreds of key staff, and understand all the internal machinations that are the key to success.
Hamilton spent his first day at Maranello shaking hands with around 1500 new people as he was shown around all the different departments at Ferrari.
While that may have meant a pretty intense day (and a very tired hand at the end of it) it is one that showed him a key aspect that he thinks is critical to title success in the future.
It is that Ferrari is the only team on the grid right now that operates out of a single campus, although Red Bull is joining that exclusive club in 2026.
Whereas previous team Mercedes had its chassis factory at Brackley and engine facility at Brixworth, Ferrari has everything pretty much under one roof.
This has helped Hamilton get up to speed with everything faster and meant he has not needed to worry about wasting time travelling between different locations.
In a bid to become even better embedded inside Ferrari, Hamilton has been staying in his motorhome, which he has parked at Fiorano, right next to Enzo Ferrari's famous house.
Staying on site means that, after his morning jog around Ferrari's test track, he can mix and match his daily schedule for maximum returns.
He can jump from meetings with his engineers, to time running in the simulator, to chats with the aero group, to get-togethers with power unit personnel, all within minutes of each other.
Not one second has been wasted - he has even been known to have lunch with engineers in his motorhome - and having everything so close to hand has accelerated that process of integration.
Familiar faces
While Ferrari is a totally new environment, Hamilton getting up to speed with its workings has been helped by having people he knows well around him.
It has already been reported that he has brought back his long-time trainer Angela Cullen as they renew a working bond that became so tight at Mercedes.
Hamilton has also known Ferrari boss Vasseur since his junior single-seater days, and they have remained good friends ever since.
In Vasseur, Hamilton has someone who he trusts and believes in. And Vasseur's strong work ethic - he regularly starts work at 7am and clocks off at 9pm - is something that is probably needed to get everything firing on all cylinders in Maranello.
Perhaps of more significance in helping Hamilton adjust to life at Maranello is that Ferrari last year captured two key signings from Mercedes: new deputy team principal Jerome D'Ambrosio (pictured above) and chassis technical director Loic Serra.
Hamilton worked closely with the pair at his old team, so knows exactly how they work, what their strengths are and what makes them tick. Getting their feedback on the way things run at Ferrari is important, and having people whose insight he trusts can only be a good thing in pushing things forward.
There is a sense of a leadership structure at Ferrari that is more unified and aligned than it has been for a while, with Hamilton right in the middle of it as he knows all the key players so well.
But the good start that Hamilton has made at Ferrari doesn't mean things cannot be better, and he has taken up Italian lessons to help further engage with those he is going to be working with so closely in the races ahead.
A totally different car
No matter how positive the first few weeks have been for Hamilton at Ferrari, there is no denying that his chances of success this year will depend entirely on how competitive the team's 2025 car is.
That will not become clear until the SF-25 is running out on track against the competition, so we will have to wait until pre-season testing in Bahrain, or even the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, to find out just what he has underneath him.
However, there are some aspects to Ferrari that have already hinted at Hamilton being able to get back to his best in F1 after some difficulties last year with Mercedes.
One of the areas where Hamilton struggled most was in qualifying, as he was unable to consistently extract as much pace from the car as his team-mate George Russell.
The qualifying head-to-head stats from 2024 highlighted this, with Russell 19-5 ahead for grands prix, and 5-1 up for sprint races.
One of the accepted explanations for Hamilton's struggles is that his natural driving style - of braking super late for corners and carrying a lot more speed into the entry phase - is not a great fit for the current ground effect cars and tyres.
The current generation of F1 machinery is particularly sensitive to ride height variations and especially that transition from maximum downforce at the end of straights to it falling away as the car enters a corner.
Things are also not helped by the 18-inch wheels which, with a smaller stiffer sidewall compared to the previous tyres, can be especially prone to locking up if they are treated brutally under braking.
For drivers like Hamilton, who in the past have been able to extract extra laptime in qualifying from braking later and harder than their rivals, not being able to lean on that strength as much as before has proved costly.
This does not mean the current cars are impossible for Hamilton to be quick in - it just means that approaching the job in hand requires him to drive in a slightly unnatural way.
On top of the generic problems a driver like Hamilton has faced with the current cars, last year's Mercedes was not so compliant. The W15 suffered a fair bit of understeer in low-speed corners, which limited Hamilton's ability to attack on corner entry as he would like.
Another issue was that as the drivers tried to rotate the rear through the turn by stabbing at the throttle - to compensate for the poor response from the front by shifting the aero balance - the back end would then break away a bit too much for Hamilton's liking.
That triggered a loss of confidence in getting the most from the car on the edge and also escalated the rear tyre temperatures - a further element in not being able to extract more pace.
Things seem to be different at Ferrari, although it is obviously too early to say exactly how it will play out in similar critical qualifying moments until Hamilton has got the SF-25 out there in a Q3 session.
But from what he has seen so far, Hamilton has found generic car characteristics with the Ferrari that are completely different to what he experienced with the Mercedes ground effect cars.
Part of that is the engine - with the mapping, performance, sound and even vibrations of the power unit all a step away from what Hamilton was used to at Mercedes.
He has worked a lot on getting the steering wheel settings to his liking as well, with new button layouts and control configurations needing to be tweaked so they become second nature.
There is a totally different philosophy of suspension too, with Ferrari unique among the frontrunners in having had a pullrod rear and pushrod front suspension configuration.
For 2025, Ferrari will be switching to a pullrod front suspension, but it is set to stick with what it has known best at the back.
This different configuration has left Hamilton experiencing a car with a through-corner aero and mechanical balance that is a world away from what he had in the past. This marks a point of reset in understanding car performance dynamics.
This is not to say that different is automatically better though - as Hamilton found out to his peril when he pushed the wind-sensitive 2023 Ferrari just a bit too hard in a Barcelona test recently and ended up spinning out and hitting the barriers.
But as he gets down to understanding the characteristics of the new 2025 Ferrari, there is no early concern that the traits that held him back more recently at Mercedes are going to be carried over.
And with a couple of runs in old cars under his belt already, plus a 2026 tyre test at Barcelona in an adapted 2024 Ferrari, Hamilton has done more testing than he normally got to do with Mercedes at this stage of a pre-season.
The excitement factor is back
The troubled time Hamilton endured at Mercedes last year left him at times pretty downbeat about how things were going in F1.
But even from the few photos and videos we have seen so far of Hamilton in action for Ferrari, it is clear his love of grand prix racing is back.
He has been like a kid in a candy store with the excitement of it all proving overwhelming at times - as he struggled to get to sleep the night before he had his first test in the SF-23 at Fiorano in early January.
That debut test was something he later described as "one of the best feelings" of his life, and the joy in his voice could be heard as he completed his first laps in a Ferrari F1 car with his "wow that was amazing" radio message.
There have been a few pinch-me moments along the way too - like, just prior to that first Ferrari test in January, having to stop to reflect for a moment when he saw himself in the bathroom mirror, dressed in red Ferrari overalls for the first time.
With a unique F175 stage appearance, and his first Ferrari launch, capping off a busy few weeks for Hamilton, he has probably never experienced a season build-up quite like this.
But rather than be worn down by it all after so long in F1, he is revelling in it as those close to him say he is more motivated and committed than he has been for a very long time.
The story of Hamilton in 2025 could well be one of a clean-slate opportunity to prove that he has a lot left to show in F1.
