Lewis Hamilton’s Barcelona win proves he still has the drive of a champion

When Lewis Hamilton stunned the sporting world ahead of the 2024 Formula 1 season, announcing a shocking move to Ferrari for the 2025 campaign, the news felt ripped from a Hollywood script. A living legend, moving on from the team he forged that status with, to join one of the most famous teams in all of sport. From the moment he arrived in Maranello, the pairing of Hamilton and Ferrari felt like destiny.

Sometimes, destiny takes a little longer to arrive.

Hamilton’s first season in red was, to put it mildly, a difficult one. He struggled out of the gate with Ferrari, and a disappointing Hungarian Grand Prix ahead of the annual Summer Shutdown led to speculation that he might simply walk away from the sport. Hamilton himself fueled that speculation, remarking that he would “hopefully” be back after the break.

“When you have a feeling, you have a feeling. There’s a lot going on in the background that is not great,” said Hamilton to Sky Sports F1 after the 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix. “Same as it was yesterday. I’m glad it’s over. I’m looking forward to going away,” added the driver.

“I look forward to coming back. Hopefully I’ll be back.”

He did return, ultimately finishing sixth in the Drivers’ Championship standings. It was the second consecutive year he finished outside the top three and his last Drivers’ Championship, coming in the shortened 2020 F1 season, felt like a lifetime away.

Not anymore.

Hamilton’s win Sunday in the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix has sparked dreams of an eighth title, which would place him atop F1 history as his seven previous titles have him level with another legend, Michael Schumacher. But beyond the mere fact that Hamilton finally secured a Grand Prix win with Ferrari — he won the F1 Sprint race at the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix in red — was how he won.

Yes, some may point to the timely intervention of a Virtual Safety Car as a reason Hamilton was able to win, but even in the early stages of the race on Sunday, he had the pace to challenge the Mercedes pair of George Russell and Kimi Antonelli. While his former team may have started the year with the strongest car under the new regulations, Ferrari has closed that gap with a series of upgrades, and on pace alone Hamilton may very well have won on Sunday, without that VSC in the closing stages.

His charge on a set of medium tires in the middle stretch of the race was perhaps his best driving yet in red, a vintage Hamilton performance. After he pitted on Lap 27 for a fresh set of C3 medium tires, he returned to the track roughly 24 seconds behind Russell.

That’s when Hamilton dropped the hammer, as he has done so many times before. By Lap 30 that gap was down to 18 seconds, and by Lap 34 he was within ten seconds of Russell.

By Lap 35, that gap was down to just under eight seconds, and the race was truly on.

Mercedes called in Russell for a pit stop on Lap 36, and while that was the fastest pit stop of the race — the Mercedes driver’s complete stop time was 21.677 seconds — it was enough to release Hamilton into first. While the intervention came in the way of Fernando Alonso’s failure, leading to a VSC that enabled Hamilton to make his final pit stop and return to the track ahead of Russell and still in the lead, another magical stint from the Ferrari driver saw him pull away from Russell over the closing stretch.

When Hamilton returned to the track after his stop, he was only 2.9 seconds ahead of Russell. By Lap 60 that gap was more than 15 seconds.

Speaking after the win, and what Hamilton described as the “longest TV pen” he has ever had, the legendary driver talked about the moments of doubt, and how his belief in both Ferrari and himself never wavered.

“How do you find the right words to express an emotion that’s beyond your wildest dreams,” questioned Hamilton in the FIA Press Conference.

“You know, I truly believed in my decision in joining Ferrari. I truly believed in what this team could achieve, what we could achieve together. And I know it started out with lots of excitement and then lots of doubt and lots of negativity that followed through a whole year.”

He then turned to thoughts of his family, his friends, and his fans.

“And I really feel like my fans really rescued me last year, my family also, and friends that stuck with me through it all. And starting into a new season, a new year, lots and lots of changes enabled in the background me to get to this position that I’m in today. I just feel a lot of gratitude, a lot of pride, and very, very proud of the people that I work with. They’re so passionate and have so much humility and they are so kind. And, you know, seeing them sing the national anthem today was wow, was an incredible feeling, man. Just the best.”

Asked about the doubt, and the criticism, of his performance last year Hamilton admitted that there are moments where the most negative talk does get to him, as it did a year ago.

“Well, I mean, I’m only human,” began Hamilton.

“So, you know, there’s moments where I see the stuff and for sure there’s moments where I allowed it to get to me and penetrate deeply. But, you know, then I went through a sequence of unplugging from that matrix. I mentioned it last year, I spent lots of time with family, lots of time with friends, real people that know me, that have never doubted me, have stuck to and by me my whole life.

“And then I just went on the mission from Christmas Day. The training that I put in was harder than I’ve ever experienced, to keep myself in good shape, because I think at the beginning of last year I got injured here, actually, and carried that for months,” added Hamilton. “And, yeah, I think just things that I know is to never second-guess yourself, never doubt yourself. You’ve got to continue to believe in yourself at the core. And those are the things that I’ve managed to reimplement into my mentality. I’ve rebuilt my mind to this point, to get myself back to where I was. And it’s a great feeling to stand here, or to sit here right now, but to stand on that podium. As I was saying earlier on, I’m probably going to sleep in this red top tonight. It’s a good feeling to have the horse on there at top.”

Now, Hamilton is not only back at the top of a Grand Prix podium for the first time in red, he is right back in the title fight. His win — coupled with Kimi Antonelli’s retirement in the closing laps after his W17 experienced a failure — has him within 41 points of Antonelli atop the Drivers’ Championship standings.

For perhaps the first time all year, Hamilton now believes that eighth title is possible.

“Well, honestly, with the way that the year started out, I have not really been thinking about it like that. I’ve not been thinking about an eighth. Of course, what we had worked towards has been being able to win, but I’ve always been conscious of the fact that it takes time,” described Hamilton on Sunday. “And Mercedes have come out the gates with a blistering car and blistering pace, both drivers doing such a great job. We know we have this power deficit. There’s going to be tracks where we go to with long, long straights where that makes it even harder.

“But as I said, we’ve got a great car at the core and if we keep adding performance and we can go through the corners quicker, maybe we can narrow that deficit down a little bit until we improve or until we close the gap on power. Very, very hard to think long-term at the moment. I think it’s just about taking it one race at a time, one week at a time. I’ll be at the factory next week,” continued Hamilton. “We’ll do a download, we’ll speak to the aerodynamicists, looking at all the different things that are in the pipeline, when they’re coming, what effect they’ll have, re-steer if I need to in whatever direction I feel that the car needs to go. Yeah, we just keep pushing and enjoying it.

“We have to just have fun with it as well, you know.”

With the win, Hamilton is now 41 points behind Antonelli in the Drivers’ Championship race, and as he showed on Sunday, when he needs to, he now has the confidence in his challenger, his team, and himself to drop the hammer, like the Hamilton of old.

Plus, Hamilton is having fun again this year.

Which makes him a true title contender once again.