Hemmoraghing Hamilton signing: Failure by Ferrari or a masterstroke?

Lewis Hamilton's qualifying troubles have been magnified this year, losing the H2H poorly to his teammate.

The headline that ruled the news on February 1st was one of shock and awe- seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton would be switching teams to Ferrari, with the Briton making an early exit in his 1+1 Mercedes deal to drive with the Scuderia, which he quoted has always been a dream for him.

The year has ticked away and we come to a close, with yet another F1 Season raced up till the end — it’s time for an incredible partnership of Mercedes and Hamilton to end, whilst a far more legendary one is set to begin come 2025 — or is it?

Lewis Hamilton is Formula 1’s most successful drivers, with most titles (tied with Schumacher for seven), most wins, most pole positions, most podiums and numerous more records to boast of across a career nearing two decades in the sport, and Ferrari is the sport’s most successful team. Surely this is a match made in heaven? We don’t think so.

We don’t have anything against Lewis, rather we have unfettered appreciation for him — but it is the worrisome fact that his 2024 season was ‘janky’ and by his own admission — the worst of his racing seasons. The question remains — is the pace well and truly gone, or was this an anomalous season, with Mercedes wishing and practicing ill will on his car?

“…perhaps they’ve been filling the tanks with barley water and not fuel.” — Prime VIdeo’s ‘Clarkson’s farm’ and ex-Top Gear Presenter Jeremy Clarkson

His qualifying pace — rather execution (to be specific) has stood out like a sore thumb. Let’s take one of the qualifying sessions to analyse this briefly — Las Vegas. A bit of background — really good pace in all practice sessions, ahead of teammate and if not for a red flag late in FP3, would have topped all sessions of practice. Come qualifying, the pace still seemed to be there. Q1 was good, with a few tenths gap over his teammate and a high place in the pecking order. So was Q2, with him setting the timesheets alight on his final run. Come Q3, all the pace seemed to just wither away. On his first run, he ran deep into a corner and aborted his lap, and even after opening another, he ran wide and gave up on that run too, coming back to the pits for a fresh set of Pirelli softs — he had NO representative time on the timesheets, so his last run should be miraculous to say the least. However, as we all know, he messed up the acceleration in the turn 3 complex, running over the chicane and ruining the entire lap.

This has been the story across the entire season bar in a few circumstances. Even in Canada, his teammate took pole while he was a lowly seventh due to a snap in the final corner. He has been whitewashed in both races and qualifying despite both being his strong suit. Yes, there is the question of age and how one-lap pace is the first to go, but this is the same Lewis Hamilton who pulled out strong qualifying performances in 2023, and his crucial errors only came to light in the final shootout for pole — which really highlights the core problem — him being able to pull off a lap under intense pressure, where the stakes are sky high.

While his race pace is still notoriously strong, he has not been astronomically faster in the races this season either, with some dismal performances such as Qatar, Baku, Australia before the DNF, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc. and over the year, his delta (gap from) his teammate was an advantage of just +0.050 in the races, while George held the upper hand in qualifying by nearly 2 tenths (+0.190 to Lewis) (source: @F1BigData on X)

It’s those little errors that creep in and give away crucial points — lead to a title loss. Nobody knows that better than Lewis himself, having lost nearly three titles that way in 2007, 2016, and 2021. Is this year an anomaly? The evidence says otherwise, but the future will be a better gauge of the question we are currently posing — as we are unaware of any vested interests at play, and we stand against beliefs that there are beliefs of the same.

2024 showed us that the pecking order, especially the top four are converging closer than ever. If Ferrari has the machinery to fight for both titles, and with Charles Leclerc at his career’s prime — will the one to throw it away be their new hotshot signing of a hemmoraghing Lewis Hamilton?

Only two months to go till we get our answer.