Hamilton eager to rediscover the enjoyable in F1 as racing resumes

Lewis Hamilton says remembering he loves racing in Formula 1 and having extra enjoyable are targets for him because the season resumes at this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix.

The seven-time world champion’s transfer to Ferrari has but to yield a podium to date this yr, and failing to attain factors in Hungary left Hamilton notably downbeat heading into the summer season break. After numerous weeks off, Hamilton says he needs to take pleasure in himself extra after feeling the swap to his new crew got here with added pressures that distracted him from his love of the game.

“I feel determined to and motivated to [move forward],” Hamilton stated. “We are just going to be working, keep our heads down, try to change a few things in our approach and start to enjoy ourselves.

“There’s been so much pressure in the first half of the season, it’s not been the most enjoyable. So I think just remembering that we love what we do, we’re all in this together, and trying to have fun.

“Ultimately, just to get on top of everything, the amount of work we have [done], all the new partners, the amount of shoots we’ve done, getting integrated into a new team… And it’s a big, big team, the biggest brand in our sport as well. So a combination of all those different things has been a lot.

“It’s probably the most important part [to have fun], because that’s the reason I got into this sport. It was fun for me, and I think for anyone in whatever career you’re in, if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, then why are you doing it?

“There can often be so much noise, you can lose sight of what’s really, really important. I just really want to focus on getting back to that enjoyment. I’ve joined the team that I’ve always dreamed of driving for and there’s been so much noise around that it’s kind of clouded us from getting to enjoy it, so now it’s about moving those things aside and just getting back to focusing on the pure love of what we do.”

Despite his disappointment after the final race in Hungary, Hamilton says the break supplied an opportunity for him to modify off earlier than reflecting on 2025 to date.

“Not much has changed, necessarily, but the good thing is, when you get time to unplug like that, it’s a reset,” he said. “We had time to go through this past week, particularly, to go through where we’ve been, things we want to improve on, processes, and things we want to try and change moving forwards.

“I see a lot of potential. There’s a lot of positives to take from the first [half of the year] even though it didn’t look necessarily the most positive. There’s lots of positives to take from it, which we’ll take forward and try and build on that.”