Jeremy Clarkson slams Lewis Hamilton’s behaviour and reveals what he’s heard about Ferrari’s 2025 car
On Monday, Hamilton officially began his journey as a Scuderia Ferrari driver as he arrived at the team’s base in Maranello.
Two days later, the seven-time Formula 1 world champion completed 30 laps around the team’s test track in Fiorano as fans finally got a glimpse of Hamilton in his new colours.
However, former Top Gear and The Grand Tour presenter Clarkson was less than impressed with the 40-year-old’s antics during his first week at Ferrari.
Writing in his latest column for The Sun, Clarkson questioned Hamilton’s eagerness to win a record-breaking eighth F1 title while revealing what he’s heard about Ferrari’s car for the upcoming season.
He began: “It could be argued that Lewis Hamilton wants a record-breaking eighth world championship before he retires, and moved to Ferrari because he reckons that this year they will have the fastest car. He may have a point. Early indications on the rumour mill suggest it’s very fast indeed.
“However, if he’s so keen on that eighth world title, you’d imagine that he’d have arrived at the factory on day one, keen to know the car’s secrets and how he can extract the most from its vast arsenal of racing trickery.”
Clarkson continued: “Instead, he turned up in an SUV in a suit and tie and posed for pictures before talking to fans, under the watchful eye of a video drone which luckily was there to capture the moment.
“Next, there was a tour of the team’s headquarters where, in slow motion, we saw the fawning engineers and the applause. And then, eventually, he went on to the track, in an F1 Ferrari that’s three years old.
“I’m told his new house isn’t anywhere near the team’s HQ. It’s in Milan, and he doesn’t even commute in a Ferrari road car, choosing instead to use Fiat’s helicopter. It made me wonder. What is Lewis now? A driver? Or a superstar?”
The 64-year-old then explained why Hamilton will have his work cut out against teammate Charles Leclerc.
Clarkson added: “What I do know is he’ll have his work cut out to beat his team-mate Charles Leclerc, who speaks Italian, knows the team, doesn’t spend quite so long posing for pictures and, thanks to a single-lap shootout, is regarded by many to be the fastest driver of them all.
“Maybe Lewis is aware of this. And maybe he signed for Ferrari for a different reason – he knows he’s past his prime now and he didn’t want to retire having never driven for motorsport’s crown jewel. Either way, I wish him well.”
The first race of the 2025 season will take place in Melbourne, Australia in March.
The seven-time world champion, who signed for the Scuderia on a multi-year contract from the beginning of 2025, has spent this week acquainting himself with his new team and new surroundings in Maranello.
Hamilton drove a 2023 Ferrari at the team’s Fiorano test track on Wednesday, and he and team-mate mate Charles Leclerc will take part in a Pirelli tyre test later this month.
But before any full-time driver can take part in an official F1 session once the season gets underway in March, they must pay a yearly fee.
The payment relates to a driver’s FIA Super Licence, which enables them to compete in sanctioned Grands Prix.
Drivers must earn enough points through their championship finishing positions in junior categories, IndyCar or the World Endurance Championship to qualify for a Super Licence. Once they have amassed enough points and complete a season of F1, however, they will automatically earn one for every subsequent season that they are signed to compete in.
According to Speedcafe, each of the 20 F1 drivers – including rookies Gabriel Bortoleto, Isack Hadjar and Kimi Antonelli – will have to pay a standard fee of €11,453 for their Super Licence to compete in the 2025 season.
But the FIA also implements a system where drivers must pay an extra fee for each point they earned during the 2024 season.
The per-point fee is said to stand at €2,443, meaning Drivers’ Champion Max Verstappen must pay €1,067,591 on top of his standard fee after earning 437 points last season.
Hamilton, meanwhile, will have to pay an additional €544,789 on top of his standard fee after earning 223 points.
The Brit will not technically have to pay the fee as it is traditionally covered by the teams themselves – something Verstappen confirmed ahead of the 2024 season, when he had to pay a staggering additional fee of €1,207,500 after collecting a record-breaking 575 points in 2023.
He said: “I do think there should be some normal ratio in that [the costs per driver]. But you know, things like that get written down, and I don’t think anybody expected that there would end up being that many points scored.”
Hamilton signed for Ferrari on a ‘multi-year contract’, effective from the beginning of 2025, in February 2024.
The seven-time world champion will team up with Charles Leclerc this season in search of a record-breaking eighth world crown, which would take him past Ferrari legend Michael Schumacher.
Hamilton will officially represent Ferrari for the first time in pre-season testing in Bahrain next month, though Ferrari have committed to a schedule that will see the Brit drive several versions of their cars in privately-organised sessions before then.
That testing will fall under F1‘s Testing of Previous Cars regulations, which allows teams to complete a maximum of 1,000 kilometres of testing each calendar year using drivers who will compete in the upcoming season.
It was expected that Hamilton would test for the team for the first time ‘in late January‘ – and further details of his first assignment have been revealed.
Kym Illman, who is an accredited F1 photographer and has a YouTube channel with over 390,000 subscribers, has revealed details of Hamilton’s first appearance as a Ferrari driver.
He says that the 40-year-old is scheduled to drive a Scuderia car at the team’s Fiorano test track in Maranello.
The test will take place on either Monday, January 20 or Tuesday, January 21, depending on weather.
Illman also says there will be a ‘huge crowd’ present around the track, writing to fans on Instagram: “Lewis Hamilton will get behind the wheel of a Ferrari F1 car at the team’s Fiorano test track in Maranello.
“Lewis arriving at/leaving the track, Lewis addressing fans through the track fence, the huge crowd expected in Maranello, traffic jams, signage, fan reaction to the testing and anything that tells a story.”
It isn’t clear as to how exactly the logistics of the session will work, or if Ferrari will be filming footage to upload to their social media – or how many fans will be let in to watch Hamilton drive the first time in a Scuderia car.
Hamilton has also yet to publicly comment on his move since it officially came into effect on January 1 – but has engaged with several Ferrari posts on social media and changed his profile picture to an image from his karting days, where he was wearing a red helmet.
The Brit first announced he was leaving Mercedes for Ferrari back in February of 2024, a move that sent shockwaves across the sporting world.
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The helmet included a yellow background, a colour he had previously used for his first outing with McLaren and Mercedes.
It also included the Ferrari badge, Hamilton’s iconic number 44 and red trim.
Reacting on social media, fans felt that the dark red trims on the helmet could be a major clue to what the Ferrari cars will look like for 2025.
One fan said: “That dark red…”
Another tweeted: “At this point they might as well show us the livery.”
A third fan added: “Ohhhhh you are noticing!”
Someone else wrote: “I hope the livery will be like that.”
Earlier in the month, it was reported that Ferrari is set to go ‘bold’ with their new livery.
As reported by Auto Racer, via Planet F1, Ferrari is set to feature a darker, more intense shade of red than in previous years.
However, it has been suggested that the shade of red will not be as extreme as the one-off burgundy livery used during the 2020 Tuscan Grand Prix in Mugello, which was to celebrate the team’s 1000th race in F1.
All 10 teams are set to unveil their new liveries during the inaugural F1 launch event in London next month.
The 2025 F1 season will begin in March with the Australian Grand Prix, which will be held around Albert Park in Melbourne on March 16.
Ferrari sent the world of sport into meltdown with the first official image of Hamilton as a Ferrari driver, with the seven-time world champion posed alongside an F40 outside the iconic Maranello farmhouse.
Hamilton took to the track for the first time in a Ferrari on Wednesday, as the Brit took the wheel of the Scuderia’s 2023 challenger with Charles Leclerc also getting some laps in.
Wednesday will have been the first time the 40-year-old has ever had track time in a non-Mercedes-powered Formula 1 car, having started his career at McLaren 2007.
While this may not seem like a major obstacle to overcome, former F1 strategist and Sky Sports analyst Bernie Collins stressed the change will be significant for Hamilton.
“From the outside, they will be very very similar when you think of performance,” Collins told SPORTbible.
“However, how they harvest energy, how they deploy energy, and how that changes between qualifying and the race, all of those things will be different.”
The power unit isn’t Hamilton’s only challenge as there are a staggering amount of differences to get to grips with, but has already asked Ferrari to make a significant change to help him adjust.
According to Autosport Hamilton has asked for some major ‘adjustments to the steering wheel’ which the team complied with ahead of his first outing.
