2025 F1 Season Review: Why the Lewis Hamilton-Ferrari combination was the biggest loser

The 2025 F1 season started with arguably the most iconic picture ever in the sport, featuring Lewis Hamilton standing outside Enzo Ferrari's home in Maranello. This was the beginning of something that had the promise of something special.

One of the most successful drivers in F1 history teaming up with the most successful team. To add to this, unlike a few of his predecessors, Lewis Hamilton was not joining Ferrari in the middle of a bad run.

The Italian team almost won the championship in 2024 and gave McLaren a run for their money. Everything indicated that this was going to be something special.

24 races and an entire season later, it's safe to say that the Ferrari-Lewis Hamilton combination has been the biggest loser of the 2025 F1 season.

Not only because it failed to live up to expectations, but also because there was next to no upside throughout the year.

Ferrari

It's not often that a team goes from almost winning the championship one year to not even winning a race in the next one when the regulations remain the same. Unfortunately, that's what happened with Ferrari.

The team that scored the most points in the second half of 2024 was absolutely nowhere in 2025, and a lot of it was put down to the car design revamp that the team went through.

From the very beginning, it was clear that Ferrari was just not going to be a title contender, and then the year was spent trying to send mixed signals to the media about what the team was doing. In the end, a title contender in 2024 ended 2025 winless and finished 4th in the championship, the worst result of the ground effect era.

To couple this with rumors of discontent within Ferrari and the board being not too happy with how things are going, the team had what can only be described as a disappointing season.

Lewis Hamilton

When Lewis Hamilton joined Ferrari, from the outside, it did appear that this was a team that was on its way to becoming the benchmark in F1. The last couple of seasons had shown decent progress. Now, with a legend on board, it was time to step up.

The team faltered when it came to putting together a car that was good enough to fight for the title; looking back, however, it's safe to say that Lewis Hamilton failed to make a meaningful impact on the team as well.

When we talk about Hamilton, we talk about a driver who was brought into Ferrari with one key purpose, to take the first few races to build himself within the team, be competitive enough in the middle part of the year, and then finally, take over from Charles Leclerc as the team leader.

At no point in his time at Ferrari did Lewis Hamilton ever look like achieving these goals. In the 24-race season, we can maybe pick the race in Silverstone as the one where he was better than Charles Leclerc.

To add to this, Hamilton now owns the longest streak for a Ferrari driver when it comes to the number of races taken to secure a podium. He also picked up the ignominy of being the first driver from the Italian team who was eliminated in Q3 thrice in a row.

The harsh reality of the situation that the driver faces right now is that if we remove the name "Lewis Hamilton" and if it were any other driver on the grid who had these numbers, they would have more than likely been fired by their team.

Conclusion

There were high hopes from the Ferrari-Lewis Hamilton collaboration for 2025. The expectations came crashing down with zero podiums and the team's worst result in the ground effect era.

In essence, if we have to pick someone who was the biggest loser of the 2025 F1 season, it has to be the Lewis Hamilton-Ferrari combination.