Success in Formula 1 is never guaranteed, and history has shown time and again how critical it is for top drivers to join the right team at the right moment.
Get it wrong, and move somewhere that is heading for a slump, and the momentum can get sucked out of a glittering F1 career.
Just look at Fernando Alonso’s switch from Ferrari to McLaren in 2015. There was all the potential to be successful, but the move fell flat as Honda struggled so much with the new turbo hybrid engines. It was the right driver at the right team at the wrong time.
Last week Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc made an interesting remark about Lewis Hamilton’s arrival at Maranello – suggesting that the seven-time champion may well have nailed the call in arriving at Maranello now.
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“I think Lewis is coming in the team in the right time,” explained Leclerc.
Now that Hamilton has offered us his first insights into his new life at Ferrari and he prepares to test his 2025 car against the opposition for the first time, we dive into the factors that may well show Leclerc is spot on.
The team boss
Ferrari’s Formula 1 form has been massively dictated throughout recent history by who is steering the ship.
Its most successful era was under Jean Todt, whose tenure from 1993 to 2007 included helping guide Michael Schumacher to those five successive titles from 2000 to 2004.
While successor Stefano Domenicali enjoyed a fairly lengthy stint from 2008 until 2014, since then there has been a bit of a revolving door at the top – which has not been helpful.
Marco Mattiacci did not last a whole season in 2014, Maurizio Arrivabene was there from 2015 until 2018, before Mattia Binotto took the reigns from 2019 until 2022.
Each of those recent bosses had their own management styles; their different beliefs in what the organisation should be, and this contributed to Ferrari lacking the long-term stability that other teams have benefitted from.
In current boss Fred Vasseur, who has been in charge since the start of 2023, Ferrari has someone who has brought strong leadership to the team and done a lot to get everyone working in the same direction.
It can be argued that, as Vasseur heads into his third year in charge, he has been able to stamp his authority on things, something Hamilton will be able to benefit from.
As Leclerc said: "Fred is a guy that has a very big strength of keeping the emotional level of the team at a very good level, and we've been so much more solid on that in the last years."
On top of that, Vasseur and Hamilton have known each well since the junior category days when Hamilton won GP2 with Vasseur at ART Grand Prix, so there is a long-standing relationship there and one that we know already works.
With trust in place, and strong friendship bonds, things could not be better aligned in terms of the team boss and driver dynamic.
Internal calmness
There was a time when any mention of Ferrari‘s culture would trigger thoughts of a bit of a political hotbed.
In the past it has had to push back against internal factions, there has been scapegoating and a finger pointing mentality where if anyone stepped out of line they would find themselves at risk of punishment.
Things are very different now as Vasseur has moved to get rid of the worst excesses of the past, and create an environment where people can thrive – which in turn should help the team to succeed.
But Vasseur isn’t a lonely island of calm amid a turbulent sea; his mindset is spreading throughout the organisation and he has brought alongside him similar personalities to help pervade this new approach.
As Leclerc pointed out this week about the new senior management team that includes Mercedes signings, deputy team principal Jerome D’Ambrosio (below, right) and chassis technical director Loic Serra (below, left), decisions are being made calmly by the head, not rushed through because of the heart.
“On Jerome and Loic, what I really like about them is that they’re very similar to Fred in the way they process emotions, which is a good thing,” said Leclerc.
“You speak to Fred, speak to Loic, speak to Jerome and you get the same feeling.
"That’s very good because it’s a big team, so not everyone speaks with Fred, not everyone speaks with Jerome, not everyone speaks to Loic but all three together speak to a lot of people within Ferrari.
“To have the same vibe and feeling out of Loic, Jerome and Fred is a very important thing. They manage emotions very well and in a team like Ferrari , where emotions can run extremely high, it’s a great thing.”
The arrival of a serenity that has not always been there before is great news for Hamilton.
Speaking about the atmosphere he had found, Hamilton said: “The energy that I've been seeing from the team…there's magic here.”
Familiar faces
Hamilton is clear that the challenge for a driver in moving teams should never be underestimated, which is why he has a new-found admiration for what Alonso and Sebastian Vettel achieved so early in their Ferrari careers.
Hamilton’s move of teams is a world away from his previous jump from McLaren to Mercedes – as he was effectively still in the bubble of a British team and his engine was identical.
Everything is different at Ferrari, but there is one element of his arrival that is perfectly timed – in that the team has already captured two former allies from Mercedes.
As well as Serra and D’Ambrosio bringing with them valuable experience from Mercedes, they embody a familiarity for Hamilton in helping him get up to speed.
They each know their strengths and weaknesses, and that means optimising where best efforts can be made.
Speaking last week about helping Hamilton adapt, D’Ambrosio said: “He doesn’t need any help to be introduced into a team or get to know people. He’s quite amazing with people and the team already loves him after the first day.
“The areas where it’s been perhaps quite useful is already knowing his team. A driver doesn’t come alone to a team, they have their own team, their own management, people around them. I have already interacted with them in a past life.
“I guess in that respect it was quite easy to know where the expectations were and what’s the background and what can already be plug in and play and what had to be approached slightly differently based on a different environment.”
A collaborative team-mate
The dynamic within an F1 team can be impacted an awful lot by the relationship between its two drivers.
A toxic partner, or a team-mate who shows no interest in helping out, can make things very difficult if you are the new arrival.
Hamilton has found himself arriving at Ferrari with a team-mate who perhaps could not be a better fit – Leclerc’s personable, quick and he is intelligent enough to see a big picture benefit from the pair of them working together to make Ferrari faster.
As Leclerc said about what he found working alongside Hamilton: “He's achieved so much. It's super interesting and it's super cool for me to be able to analyse how he actually works day-to-day with his engineers. What are the comments that he makes, what are the things that he takes, where he puts particular attention on.”
Hamilton and Leclerc regularly have dinners with team boss Fred Vasseur, and have kicked off a bit of a rapport through playing online chess against each other – with one of their matches spotted on the F1 75 TV coverage.
But perhaps best of all is that the early indications point to both of them having a similar driving style and wanting the same thing from the car. That will be good news for Ferrari’s engineers.
Coming off a near miss
If you cannot join a team when it is dominant, then the next best time to get there is when it is knocking on the door of the title.
Hamilton’s arrival at Ferrari is not like what he had at Mercedes, when he brought into a long-term dream and it was all about building blocks to the future.
Ferrari is right there now, and in fact it could be argued it had all the elements it needed to win the constructors' championship in 2024 – only falling short through some poor reliability in Canada and that floor misstep it took in Spain.
The squad learned an awful lot last year, especially about its processes and windtunnel/track correlation – and this will all be of huge value in it being a much stronger proposition this season.
As Vasseur has hinted, perhaps Ferrari is even stronger this year than it would have been if it had not had that Spanish floor upgrade problem.
“When we had a tough journey in June-July, that we were able to come back quickly, to change our approach, to react as a team, to work as a team - this was good momentum for us and a good signal for the development of the team,” he said.
Car development looks strong
Lewis Hamilton will not know until Bahrain testing next week exactly how strong the Ferrari is, but all indications point to Ferrari being in a much better place than it has been in recent years.
Let us not forget that even just two years ago Ferrari had quite a troublesome SF-23 – that was aerodynamically unstable, sensitive to wind change and chewed through its tyre too much.
Hamilton himself found out exactly how much that car could be on the knife edge when, trying to find the limit during an old car test at Barcelona, he was caught out and ended up spinning it into the barriers.
Last year Ferrari made a notable step and got itself a good platform to build from – which should give Hamilton some optimism about arriving when things are on the up.
As Leclerc said: “In 2024 it was a very different situation because the car was a very healthy one, in general. Just when we had the upgrade problem there were some things that we wanted to change, but after that we had a very good car. We just needed more performance.”
Perhaps best of all for Hamilton is that, from his early feelings of Ferrari machinery, it suits his driving style of wanting to lean on the front of the car under braking and corner entry.
He said: “The feeling is a lot different. I don't feel like currently I'm having to change my driving style too much. I'm actually feeling quite comfortable in the car and just taking it one step at a time.”
