Vasseur backs outspoken Hamilton and Leclerc after Ferrari nightmare

When the lights went out on Lewis Hamilton’s first season in red, it ended not with champagne but with the Briton admitting he felt an “unbearable amount of anger and rage” after crashing in practice and then being knocked out in Q1 at the Abu Dhabi finale. Yet as his Ferrari sat in the Yas Marina pit lane under the harsh floodlights, team principal Fred Vasseur was making one thing clear: Hamilton and Charles Leclerc are free to vent – and Ferrari will listen.

This was supposed to be the dream move. Instead, Hamilton has repeatedly labelled his debut campaign with the Scuderia “a nightmare”, most starkly after retiring from the São Paulo Grand Prix, where he admitted: “This is a nightmare, and I have been living it for a while.” As BBC Sport and The Guardian report, he reached the end of the year still without a grand prix podium for Ferrari, despite a sprint victory in China, and finished the season P6 in the drivers’ standings behind Leclerc, who beat him 7–0 in podiums.

Ferrari’s pain ran deeper than one driver. The Scuderia ended 2025 without a win and slumped to fourth in the constructors’ table, their first winless season since 2021, as McLaren and Red Bull dominated the grands prix and Mercedes even snatched two victories with George Russell. In the heat of that frustration chairman John Elkann publicly urged his star pairing to “focus on driving and talk less” after the double retirement in Brazil. Leclerc responded by stressing to Formula1.com that “John has known me for many, many years, and we have a very good relationship and we’ve always been very honest with ourselves”, while Hamilton insisted that “we’ve just been focused on doing our job back at the factory, so everyone’s super-focused on improving” and that “it has been the most challenging year and it’s definitely not a year that I would ever dream of, especially in your first year at Ferrari.”

Into that crossfire stepped Vasseur, batting away suggestions that his drivers should soften their words. In Abu Dhabi he told Autosport and Motorsport.com that he doesn’t “pay attention to the reaction in the TV pen” and would “be destroyed if I had the drivers telling me that we are doing a good job”. Instead, he frames Hamilton’s sharp radio messages and Leclerc’s constant demands as fuel for progress, saying “it’s a positive dynamic that we are there just to do a better job” and urging them to push Ferrari “on every single area. The simulator, the set-up, the aero”.

Speaking to Canal+ and quoted by AutoHebdo, Vasseur went further, arguing that “Lewis is completely different between his media appearances, where he doesn’t necessarily want to answer questions, and his attitude half an hour later in the debriefings. He’s much more constructive. So it doesn’t bother me at all.” Far from wanting to muzzle his drivers, he declared: “Honestly, having drivers who push us to our limits is our greatest motivator.” That same line ran through his comments to media including Motorsport Week as he downplayed Hamilton’s Abu Dhabi “rage and anger”, saying: “I don’t pay attention to the reaction on the TV… I can understand that sometimes the guy is a bit emotional… Honestly, the most important for me is to have a guy coming back to us and pushing the team to do a better job.”

"It’s been a tough season, but the kindness and hard work of everyone at Ferrari means a lot to me. I stand with team and know we have better times ahead."

— Lewis Hamilton, speaking to AP News after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

For Hamilton, the bruises of year one at Ferrari are written in cold numbers: no poles, no grand prix podiums and only that single sprint win in China, even as his old rivals fought for titles up front. Yet he has repeatedly talked of resilience, telling Formula1.com that he “firmly believe[s] in absolutely every single individual at the factory” and is “committed to helping them rebuild and grow back to their winning ways”. With sweeping 2026 engine and chassis rules looming and a fanbase that measures time in championships, Ferrari are betting that unfiltered honesty from Hamilton and Leclerc – and a boss willing to back it – is exactly what they need to turn a nightmare debut into the prologue of a comeback masterclass.