Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari, 2025

Lewis Hamilton said rumours Ferrari could hire former Red Bull team principal Christian Horner are a distraction, as the team has already shown its commitment to Frederic Vasseur.

Ferrari announced in July it had extended Vasseur’s contract, three weeks after Red Bull confirmed it had replaced Horner. His departure from the team was finalised last month.

Reports elsewhere have claimed Ferrari is looking to hire Horner. Hamilton, who said in August he was “incredibly happy” with Vasseur’s new deal, said the claims were not helpful for the team.

“I don’t know where the rumours have come from, so I can’t really shed much light on that,” he said. “But it’s a little bit distracting for us as a team.

“Obviously, the team have made it clear where they stand in terms of re-signing Fred. Fred and I and the whole team are working really hard on the future for the team so these things naturally aren’t helpful.

“I know everyone back in the factory is working incredibly hard, focused, and these sort of rumours can sometimes be distracting.”

Ferrari has not won a grand prix this season, though Hamilton took victory at the sprint race in Shanghai. He said they will treat the final rounds as “test weekends” to prepare for next year, when F1 will introduce a major overhaul of its technical rules.

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“For me it’s really [about] trying to keep the focus on the goal that’s in front of us and building on next year’s car, continuing to build a foundation on this year so that next year we can have better execution, better overall performance. As I said back in Spa I’m having lots of meetings, trying to make sure that we’re sailing in the right direction.”

The team have only managed a single top-five finish over the last four rounds. Hamilton believes they can perform better this weekend than they have recently.

“There’s lots and lots of positives to take from every weekend and there’s lot of areas that we can improve on,” he said. “We spent time after the last race going through areas that can improve and I really think that this weekend we can take a step forward of extracting more from the car that we have.

“We’ve not moved the car forwards in terms of performance, but there is more performance in the car that if we execute a little bit better, I think we can extract more. So that’s the goal.”

This article will be updated

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