Lewis Hamilton arrived at Ferrari this year in comparable circumstances to those his predecessor faced four years earlier.

Carlos Sainz Jnr joined the team in the final year of a regulations cycle. Charles Leclerc knew the chassis well and Sainz had limited time to get up to speed pre-season.

The outcomes were rather different, however. True, Sainz didn’t beat Leclerc on either of the core metrics, coming out 13-9 behind in qualifying and 14-6 on grand prix finishes. But he pipped his team mate in championship standings, ending the season just five-and-a-half points ahead.

Hamilton was further behind in every respect: 19-5 down in qualifying, 18-3 behind on race day and out-scored by 242 points to 156. Perhaps most puzzlingly of all, Hamilton’s performances appeared to dip as the season went on. The gap between him and Leclerc in qualifying widened and he failed to progress beyond Q1 at the final three rounds.

Leclerc took seven podiums, Hamilton none

How to explain this? It’s certainly true that Sainz has more experience of adjusting to new teams than Hamilton. Indeed, after 12 years at Mercedes, moving anywhere else was always going to be a significant adjustment for Hamilton.

Even so, over a 24-round season, shouldn’t that seven-times-championship-winning magic have shone through once in a while? Arguably it did with his win from pole position in the sprint race in China, but that was a one-off high for team and driver.

At mid-season, it seemed Hamilton was increasingly in sync with the Ferrari and he appeared to be knocking on the door of a podium finish. He followed Leclerc to fourth place in Austria then let a clear shot at the rostrum slip through his fingers at home a week later.

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By that point Leclerc had already notched up five podium finishes, but Hamilton had scored consistently enough to lie just 16 points behind him in the championship. The gap really widened over the second half of the season. Prior to then Hamilton finished every grand prix in the top 10 (Shanghai disqualification notwithstanding); after then he only made it into the top five once.

Granted, he might have taken a podium finish in Mexico had Ferrari kicked up more of a fuss about the driver who overtook him off the track at the first corner. As that driver was his team mate, it was never likely to happen.

But what really stands out from Hamilton’s second half of the season was not the one opportunity missed but the string of occasions where he never made it into Q3 – or even Q2. As Ferrari dropped further off the pace, having long ago prioritised their development work for 2026, Leclerc’s ability to wring a competitive lap time out of their chassis helped him extend his points lead over Hamilton.

What does this mean for Hamilton’s future at Ferrari? Perhaps, with the benefit of a year to settle into the team and once the disliked ‘ground effect’ cars are gone, we’ll see a rejuvenated Hamilton. Or perhaps his weak showing against his team mate was a continuation of the apparent slump in his final season at Mercedes, and we are already past the beginning of the end for Hamilton’s F1 career. Either way, 2026 looks like being a pivotal year for him.

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Unrepresentative comparisons omitted. Negative value: Hamilton was faster; Positive value: Leclerc was faster

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