Lewis Hamilton’s punchy response to ‘complete rubbish’ Ferrari claims

Lewis Hamilton has slammed claims he has started to lose faith in his new Ferrari team after just two races of the 2025 F1 season as “complete rubbish”.

The seven-time world champion has endured an up-and-down start to life at Ferrari following two difficult and largely disappointing weekends.

Hamilton and teammate Charles Leclerc were both off the pace in Melbourne and finished a lowly eighth and 10th in F1 2025’s wet and chaotic opener. Things started better in China, where Hamilton converted his first Ferrari pole position into victory in the sprint race.

But that performance punctuated what has otherwise been an underwhelming and inconsistent start, with Leclerc and Hamilton going on to take a distant fifth and sixth in the main grand prix before being disqualified.

Ferrari are only fifth in the constructors’ championship – behind Williams – on 17 points after the first two rounds. They are already 61 points behind reigning world champions McLaren.

Ferrari’s early struggles prompted former Aston Martin strategist Bernie Collins to raise concerns about possible trust issues arising between Hamilton and F1’s most iconic team.

But Hamilton was quick to reject such suggestions ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix.

“I didn’t feel like any frustration or anything afterwards, it is what it is,” Hamilton told media at Suzuka.

“Of course, we’ve gone through everything. We take the highs and lows of the season, and we try to make sure that we go together as a team.

“Obviously, it’s not what everyone’s worked hard to have happen on a race weekend.

“No team, no engineer, no mechanic puts all the effort into something like that but it’s, I’d say the most impressive thing is how the team have taken it, how they’ve worked, how they’ve churned through the data and how we’ve progressed from here is the most important.

“I saw someone say something about whether I’m losing faith in the team, which is complete rubbish.

“I have absolute 100% faith in this team.”

Lewis Hamilton lowers Ferrari expectations

Hamilton, who before the season stated his belief that Ferrari have “absolutely every ingredient to win”, has moved to downplay expectations surrounding the team.

“I think there was obviously a huge amount of hype at the beginning of the year, and I don’t know if everyone was expecting us to be winning from race one and winning a championship in our first year, that wasn’t my expectation,” he said.

“I know that I’m coming into a new culture, a new team and it’s going to take time.

“I’ve spent the past two months just observing how the team works in comparison to the other two teams that I’ve worked at, and through this past week, I’ve been out to make notes and create points of areas that I feel like we can improve.

“That will continue through the year as we learn more and more about each other.”