24/07/2025 15:10
Lewis Hamilton says he "refuses" to suffer the same fate as
Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel in not winning a world
championship with Ferrari. Hamilton followed in the footsteps of
two of his biggest rivals in signing for Ferrari in the hopes of
winning another world title, and being the driver to end Ferrari's
wait for a drivers' crown. The Scuderia's last champion was Kimi
Raikkonen in 2007, with Alonso and Vettel both finishing as
runner-up to Vettel and Hamilton, respectively, during their
tenures at the team. Hamilton's first season at Ferrari has not
gone to plan, as he remains without a grand prix podium halfway
through the year, although he did win the Chinese GP sprint race.
During the two-week gap between the British and Belgian GPs,
Hamilton revealed talks with senior Ferrari bosses, including
chairman John Elkann, CEO Benedetto Vigna, and team boss Fred
Vasseur, whilst also detailing 'documents' he had prepared for the
team. When pressed on these, Hamilton declared his refusal to
suffer the title-less fate of Alonso and Vettel. "The reason for
[writing the documents] is that I see a huge amount of potential
within this team, nothing comes close to the passion, but it is a
huge organisation and there are a lot of moving parts, not all of
which are firing on all cylinders," Hamilton replied when
questioned by RacingNews365 why he had prepared the documents.
"Ultimately, that is why the team has not had the success I think
it deserves, and so I feel it is my job to challenge every area, to
challenge everybody in the team, and particularly the guys at the
top, making decisions. "If you look at the team over the last 20
years, they've had amazing drivers like Kimi [Raikkonen], Fernando
[Alonso] and Sebastian [Vettel], all world champions, but [Alonso
and Vettel] didn't win a world championship with Ferrari - and I
refuse for that to be the case with me. "So I am going the extra
mile, and I've been fortunate to have experiences in two other
great teams, and whilst things will be different because of the
culture, if you take the same path, you will get the same results.
"It has been incredibly responsive, we've been improving in so many
areas and continuously delivering responses, there is a lot of work
and improvements to be made, but it has been very responsive. "I am
trying to create allies in the organisation and get them geed up. I
am here to win, and this is crunch time for me. "I truly believe
in the potential of the team, I really believe they can we multiple
world championships moving forward. They already have an amazing
legacy, but during my time, that is my sole goal."
