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Getting a “bit stroppy” with Ferrari and making “cryptic accusations” about a part of his car being defective, Christian Danner says Lewis Hamilton is part of the “two-fold problem” Ferrari are currently dealing.
Part two is that the car is “relatively slow” compared to its rivals.
Ferrari’s early season problems are ‘a bit Lewis Hamilton’
Three races into the F1 2025 season and Ferrari may have a Sprint win courtesy of Hamilton, but it has not been the start to the campaign that anyone from the Maranello team had expected.
Ferrari have scored just 35 points, their efforts not helped by a double disqualification from the Grand Prix in China.
Although they have managed to get both cars into the points in every event, pre-DSQ that is, they have yet to reach the podium in a Grand Prix.
Although Hamilton’s victory in the Sprint in Shanghai took some of the sting out of that, two weeks later in Japan he was speaking about a part on his car that was defective, claiming that was why he was slower than his team-mate Charles Leclerc in the Grands Prix.
I’m really hoping in the next race we’ll see, hopefully, some positive changes,” he told the media at Suzuka. “Through the first three races, there’s been a bit of a deficit between both sides of the garage, on an element of the car, so on my side, something underperforming. So it’s good to know.”
Speaking further on this apparent underperforming SF-25 element, Hamilton told Sky F1: “I’m really hoping when that’s fixed, I’ll start getting a bit better results.”
But while former F1 driver Danner says there could be something to what Hamilton said, he believes Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur needs to nip that kind of talk in the bud, and quickly.
“I would say that there could of course be something behind it,” Danner told AvD-Motorsport-Magazin. “I mean, I expect Ferrari to react to this – not necessarily for Bahrain, but at some point, of course. Fred Vasseur can’t put up with the driver saying that there is a component on the car that is hindering my performance.
“I don’t envy Fred, because he really wants to get it right. He really wants Lewis to get everything.
“I don’t think it’s very clever to make such cryptic accusations against the team. Along the lines of: ‘You didn’t give me one component and that’s why I’m slow’. I think that no matter how difficult it is for such a superstar, he has to bite the bullet and see how he gets on.”
This is not the first time that Hamilton has voiced concerns, the Briton doing the same at Mercedes.
But unlike his long-term relationship with Mercedes, for whom he raced for 12 seasons, Hamilton has only been with Ferrari for a few months.
“It wasn’t the case that everything was always nice, that he always approved of everything,” Danner said of Hamilton’s time with Mercedes. “But at the crucial moment, the guys in the garage understood him, the engineers did something that he needed. Then he was able to realise it brilliantly.
“He’s still miles away from that at Ferrari at the moment.”
The 67-year-old, who made 36 F1 Grand Prix starts, reckons Hamilton being a “bit stroppy” is just one of the two problems Ferrari currently face. The second is that the car is too slow.
“I think they have a two-fold problem there. On the one hand, as sorry as I am, it’s a bit Hamilton,” Danner said.
“He’s not really coming to terms with the whole issue. You can tell he’s a bit insecure, a bit stroppy almost and complains about this and that.
“I think he simply hasn’t developed the right feeling yet and hasn’t fully understood how to handle this car – which is completely normal. I don’t blame him for that at all.
“For Ferrari, this means that not only do I have a driver who is lagging behind – let me say relatively clearly – compared to the number 1, the faster one.
“Secondly, I have a problem with the car as a whole, because the faster driver is also relatively slow compared to the leader. So it’s not easy to get things in order. I think the pure speed is just not quite there yet.”
