Lewis Hamilton ‘decided’ to rediscover F1 love at Ferrari after break

ZANDVOORT, Netherlands — Lewis Hamilton hopes to rediscover his love of Formula 1 within the second half of the season after admitting his enjoyment for the game was diminished earlier than the summer time break by the strain of driving for Ferrari.

The seven-time world champion joined Ferrari from Mercedes over the winter, fulfilling his boyhood dream of driving for the Italian crew.

However, Ferrari’s battle for efficiency relative to championship leaders McLaren and Hamilton’s personal points adapting to a very new automotive led to a collection of disappointing outcomes.

At the final spherical in Hungary, Hamilton mentioned he was “just useless” after qualifying exterior the highest ten and recommended Ferrari can be higher off changing him.

Speaking forward of the resumption of the season this weekend within the Netherlands, the Ferrari driver mentioned his strategy to the ultimate ten races of 2025 can be to benefit from the expertise of being a Ferrari driver.

“I feel determined to and motivated to [move forward],” he mentioned. “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 a lot strain on this first half of the season, it is not been essentially the most pleasant. So I believe simply remembering that we love what we do, we’re all on this collectively and yeah, attempting to have enjoyable.”

Asked where he felt the pressure was coming from, Hamilton added: “Just to get on high of all the pieces, the quantity of labor now we have, all the brand new companions, the quantity of shoots we have carried out, getting built-in into a brand new crew, and it is a huge, huge crew, the largest model in our sport as properly.

“So a combination of all those different things has been a lot.”

After coming near profitable the constructors’ title final 12 months, expectations round Ferrari have been excessive forward of the season.

The arrival of essentially the most profitable driver within the sport’s historical past solely served to attract extra consideration to the crew, and Hamilton mentioned the mixture had created a degree of undesirable “noise” across the crew.

“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 simply actually need to concentrate on getting again to that enjoyment. I’ve joined the crew that I’ve at all times dreamed of driving for and there is been a lot noise round that it is form of clouded us from attending to get pleasure from it, so now it is about transferring these issues apart and simply getting again to specializing in the pure love of what we do.”

Hamilton is not expecting a sudden turnaround in results in the second half of the year, but said F1’s summer break over the past three weeks had been a chance to reset ahead of this weekend’s race at Zandvoort.

“Not a lot has modified, essentially, however the good factor is, while you get time to unplug like that, it is a reset. I had time to undergo this previous week, significantly, to undergo the place we have been, issues we need to enhance on, processes, issues we need to try to change transferring 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.”