And to add insult to injury, the seven-time world champion hasn't been able to finish on the rostrum even in his first season in red.

The reason? Early on in the year, Ferrari chose to halt development of the SF-25 to focus on designing next year's car, which will premiere the 2026 F1 regulations, since, according to their estimations, they would have been able to catch McLaren until very late in the current campaign.

The decision has constricted Ferrari's sporting performance: without aerodynamic upgrades, they've been forced to experiment with potential set-up variations that although can help extract more from the car's current potential, they can't really increase it, or address its fundamental limitations.

And so, Ferrari have fallen away from the fight for P2 in the Constructors' championship, and as they head off into the final round of the season their chances of finishing off the current campaign with zero wins seem like a certainty.

After heavily criticising the FIA for their approach to the Qatar Grand Prix, which he felt was the worst race of the season, Hamilton used the improvements Williams and Sauber have made across the season as a platform from which to shed light on the performance related consequences Ferrari's focus switch onto 2026 has had on the team, a choice which Hamilton fully supports and was an ardent advocate for.

"On the other side for us, I think it really highlighted just how developed everybody else is and how undeveloped we are at this point of the year," Hamilton told GPblog after the race.

"And keeping up with [the other cars around me wasdifficult], you know? I was nearly getting overtaken by the Stake [F1] car, and I couldn't keep up with the Williams. And the Williams came third, so, yeah. They've done a great job," concluded Hamilton.

Hamilton and Leclerc have time and time again criticised Ferrari’s poor performance in 2025, with the British driver saying recently he had detailed notes on the team’s weaknesses and urging Ferrari to act on them, while Leclerc argued he took extreme risks just to fight for P8 or P9 in Qatar only to end up P10 in qualifying.

Team principal Frederic Vasseur acknowledged their frustration, while downplaying them at the same time saying they had been uttered in the heat of the moment. Read Vasseur's full statements here.

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