Lewis Hamilton is convinced that this season could be the year of Ferrari after driving for the first time on Wednesday the car of the Formula 1 team for the coming season, with an eighth record title in his eyes. Hamilton delighted fans of hope by putting the new SF-25 car to the test on Ferrari’s own track in Fiorano Modedee in northern Italy before stopping to greet spectators who hope that he will be able to end the long drought in the Italian team world championship. Ferrari has not won the title of the manufacturers since 2008 and Kimi Raikkonen was the last man to win the driver’s title with them the previous year, but asked if he thought that the `Scuderia ” was ready to win the world championship, Hamilton simply said” yes “.
“I have already worked with two winning teams in the world championship, I know what a winning team looks like,” Hamilton told journalists.
“The passion here is not like nothing you have seen. They have absolutely all the ingredients they need to win a world championship and it is simply a question of gathering all the pieces.
“Everyone just has a really calm and good approach. No one is as if we were perfect in each region. Everyone is as we have to raise everywhere and they leave no stone not returned to try to do it.”
At 40, Hamilton is not only the biggest star in F1, he is also one of the older men in sport, but he is full of young enthusiasm for a new challenge to Ferrari after having taken the path of the Max Verstappen de Red Bull in his last three seasons in Mercedes.
Since the loss of the title of pilots of 2021 against Verstappen in controversial circumstances in the final GP, Hamilton finished sixth, third then seventh in 2024, at around 214 points behind his Dutch rival which won the last four championships.
Hamilton said in a video published by Ferrari earlier Wednesday that he thought that “nothing would be newer” and he is clearly surprised at the new breath he knows.
“When I was much younger, I certainly did not think during my 19th season or 19th year, whatever the case, that I would be as excited,” said Hamilton.
“I never thought at this stage of my career, I would have so much excitement. By wanting to be at work early, wanting to put additional work levels to realize the dream … I have just felt this new wave of life and energy.
“For me, this is the first. Winning a championship with Ferrari is the first. That’s what I work. I don’t think about the number eight. I think of the first championship that the team won for a while.”
Hamilton has a lot to prove despite his many achievements, because last year, he only won two Grands Prix, and his British GP victory in July ended a two and a half year -old sequence without a victory that went back to the 2021 season, now sad.
And he admits that he will have to acclimatize to his new environment before being able to hope to reproduce his golden years with Mercedes.
“We know that we have a lot of work to do; I know that I have a lot of work to do,” he said.
“But everyone looks back in this team to make me feel welcome and I really feel at home. I know that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, it’s natural, it feels good, so I think we have to continue to pass the time and take a step at a time.
“I do everything I can to be ready for the first race.”
Hamilton will have his first serious series of his new car during the winter test session next week in Bahrain before the Australian Grand Prix of opening next month in Melbourne.
(This story has not been published by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a unionized flow.)
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