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Lewis Hamilton’s first Formula 1 test with Ferrari ended with the seven-time world champion acknowledging “we have a lot of work to do but I can’t wait to get started”.
In just a few words, Hamilton captured what was really significant about his Fiorano outing in the 2023 Ferrari. Though this is the start of a new era, the test was barely the beginning - ‘event zero’ of Hamilton’s 2025 preparations and nothing more.
That doesn’t mean it didn’t have value, though. And it certainly offered plenty of insights into one of F1’s biggest ever stories.
The boxes already ticked
Hamilton’s first Ferrari test was never going to be about performance – either him seeing how good the Prancing Horse’s cars are, nor the team seeing how rapid its new star-signing is.
Instead, this was very much an exercise in both getting to know each other.
After meeting people at Maranello since Monday, and a run on the simulator, Hamilton needed to experience a Ferrari car first hand – to get an initial feel of its handling, its brakes and perhaps most of all its power unit.
There were no high-speed runs planned in his stints – instead it was about exploring elements such as control systems, starts, and DRS use, with the SF-23 on a day when track conditions were not ideal.
It was also important to start building a relationship with the crew who will be around him this year – including his new engineer Riccardo Adami.
As onlooking team boss Fred Vasseur remarked at the end of the day, lap times were irrelevant for what he labelled as “a warm-up” for the team in the garage.
“That was the sole purpose of today,” said Vasseur. - Jonathan Noble
Barcelona test will be more important
Mileage is not unlimited when testing older F1 cars. Ironically, Ferrari played a part in that being the case, having been very vocal in its concerns about how other teams were using the testing of previous car rules in 2024.
Now, between the race drivers, there are four days that can be used and 1000km that can be completed. The Fiorano test has already eaten into one of those days, and just over 100km, with Charles Leclerc joining in to rack up just a few laps to blow the cobwebs off.
The intention is for the Barcelona test at the end of January to be much more productive. You can expect that to involve a much larger number of laps and kilometres completed, and Leclerc to be involved as well - it wouldn't make sense for him to just appear for a few laps at Fiorano.
Experienced drivers don't always handle joining a new team in the right way, says Gary Anderson. Get early access to Gary's thoughts on Hamilton's first days at Ferrari via The Race Members' Club on Patreon now
It also indicates that Barcelona, being a much more representative circuit, will be a much more important test for Hamilton and Ferrari. This was just about getting up to speed, making sure the team operating the car got its sharpness back, and that Hamilton was familiar with things like the steering wheel, with the start procedure, with the team's processes and communication and whatnot, so that all the initial acclimatisation could be done now.
That leaves more meaningful performance-related work to be conducted at Barcelona, a track Hamilton has a great reference for himself and for recent F1 machinery, and where Ferrari can start to assess its new signing properly. - Scott Mitchell-Malm
Tifosi bond is already strong
Being a Scuderia Ferrari F1 driver is a special status in Ferrari, but the welcome Hamilton received at Fiorano on Wednesday was far beyond that.
He was hailed as an arriving hero, a long-time rival who is being taken to the heart of the tifosi as one of their own with immediate effect. That's proved by the thousands who flocked to Maranello to hang around in the cold and wet to catch a glimpse of his first day on track in a Ferrari F1 car.
The tifosi save such welcomes for special drivers. Having spent the past year eagerly awaiting his arrival, they’ve taken him into their hearts immediately. Check out the footage of him paying a visit to the fans who were chanting for him for evidence of that.
It will take time - and results - for that to turn into eternal devotion and hero worship, but there's no question Ferrari's fans are delighted to have him. Forget the gripes on social media about him being 'washed' or just moving for the money, the tifosi that turned up at Fiorano see him for what he is: a pure racer who couldn't resist a late-career challenge at Ferrari.
And it's not just the home fans who treated this day as momentous. All day, fans the world over lapped up every photo and video clip. After all, this is F1's most successful driver's first day driving with its most successful team. Such occasions are rare, so regardless of what happens over the next couple of years on track, this was a day to remember. And a reminder that there are so many both in Italy and around the world who want the Hamilton/Ferrari dream to succeed. - Edd Straw
Hamilton looks and sounds re-energised
We haven't heard from Hamilton properly in his own words yet, and obviously the images that are being released are professionally shot, many are staged, and what’s made public is carefully curated.
So, it would be naive (and cliched) to say these pictures are worth a thousand words from Hamilton himself. But they’ve conveyed a clear message. Some are statements of intent, some simply show how genuinely pumped Hamilton seems to be.
He looks and sounds re-energised. The impression was that he wanted to extend his F1 career for longer than Mercedes was completely committed to keeping him for. It seemed Hamilton needed a change of scenery to be able to continue for as long as he wanted to, not just in terms of finding a team that wanted him, but also to get the most out of himself and be motivated.
Hamilton was at the same place for a very long time and that started to go the wrong way. At Ferrari, we are already seeing an environment that is making him feel special, making him feel loved, putting him centre stage.
There's a lot of attention on him. There's a lot of excitement for him. There's a massive amount of intrigue associated with the challenge as well. And it goes both ways.
Yes, there’s a lot of work to do, but right now it looks like a challenge he is totally up for, rather than having the air of a glorified career post-script. - SMM
Hamilton’s team is taking shape
Hamilton is facing something he has not experienced for more than a decade: getting embedded in a new team.
Stepping out of the comfort zone of a well-known home like Mercedes will bring with it some challenges, but one of the best ways to ease that transition is to have some familiar faces around him.
Matters are helped by him knowing team boss Fred Vasseur well, but there are other people he is friends with too – like Jerome D’Ambrosio and Loic Serra who were both signed from Mercedes.
Vasseur and d’Ambrosio were both keen observers of Hamilton’s first day of running.
Familiarity is also why Hamilton has brought former trainer Angela Cullen - who was already present at this test - back in as support to help make up the backroom team that will look after him in Italy.
The test was also the first official confirmation we had that Sainz’s former race engineer Riccardo Adami will work with Hamilton this year. - JN
Fiorano debut more special - and practical
Doing the test in Italy has been the plan for a very long time, and this confirmed that Fiorano was a more special place to make his debut.
Taking part in the Abu Dhabi post-season test would have been more useful, but as Hamilton said, driving the red car for the first time there wasn't something that excited him.
His preference was to do the rollout in Italy, behind closed doors. Well, he got most of his wish. ‘Behind closed doors’ is what this test was meant to be but it was never going to be that, given Fiorano is visible from public roads just outside the circuit!
Will Hamilton have the same unhappy Ferrari fate as Vettel and Alonso? Get early access to Mark Hughes' column on that via The Race Members' Club on Patreon now
There were fans, journalists, TV crews, photographers getting a decent view of what Hamilton and Ferrari were up to. If he’d spun or encountered a problem the world would have known. But that only added to the spectacle.
And despite the attention, this was a much more practical place to make his debut. It made things easier alongside Hamilton's Maranello visit, as he could shift straight from the work he was doing in the factory into this test on Wednesday morning. It also got Leclerc into the car easily as well.
In terms of managing the limited mileage, Fiorano works well because it is a shorter circuit. That also makes it easier for Hamilton to get up to speed, and to clock a reasonable number of laps out without doing too many kilometres.
That's quite handy when you're doing initial acclimatisation work. Repetition is important. The more times you go round a track, the more you can actually learn. So it ticked a neat box in terms of what Hamilton needed to get out of this endeavour. - SMM
This feels like a significant moment for Ferrari
Ferrari had made clear last year that it did not want to devote an official media day for Hamilton’s first day at Ferrari, as it had for Michael Schumacher 30 years ago, because it did not want to waste time nor energy on it.
But it has been obvious from the moment that the seven-time champion arrived at Maranello that this was a big deal for both Ferrari and F1 itself.
The Instagram photo of Hamilton posing in front of Enzo Ferrari’s house with the F40 in the background is claimed to have been the most liked F1 image of all time.
And beyond the tifosi packing to the rafters the vantage points around Fiorano to see Hamilton’s first day, it said a lot that Ferrari vice president Piero Ferrari made sure he was on hand to see events play out.
It was interesting too that in Ferrari’s press release detailing the day, it chose to point out a comparison between the fog that greeted Hamilton’s first day of action with the same weather conditions back on November 16, 1995.
That was the day that Schumacher first drove for Ferrari, and there is a sense that this could be the start of something similarly big for the team. - JN
