The seven-time world champion of the Formula One racing league has moved from Mercedes to Ferrari. On January 22, 2025, Lewis Hamilton drove in his first test of the new car, and more recently on January 28, 2025, Hamilton tested the new Ferrari in Barcelona. On February 4th, Hamilton ran trials with smaller tires on a 2024 Ferrari car.
Lewis Hamiton, age 40, is in his 18th season and has been on three teams, McLaren (2007-12), Mercedes (2013-24), and now Ferrari (2025-). Over eighteen years as a professional driver in Formula One, Hamilton has racked up 202 podiums, 4862.5 points, and seven world championships while entering 356 grand prix. As a young child growing up in a struggling home in Stevenage, a town outside of London, Lewis Hamilton was a go-kart champion by the age of ten. Hamilton’s parents divorced when he was two, and his father worked as many as three jobs so the young child could pursue his kart racing career.
Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton’s new team, is the oldest remaining team in the Formula One grid. In 1950, the Formula One World Championship was founded, and of course, Ferrari was there from day one. The team is most successful winning a record sixteen constructors titles and fifteen drivers titles. The constructors title is where the team wins the championship and drivers are individual for each driver. In 2020, Ferrari became the first F1 team to celebrate 1,000 races.
The British driver joins many greats who have raced for this team, including Michael Schumacher, and Niki Lauda. Michael Schumacher is a former driver, who won seven world championships similar to Lewis Hamilton. With the team, Michael Schumacher earned pole position, 72 times and was placed on the podium 116 times. Throughout his career, even off the team, Schumacher had 155 podiums. Niki Lauda, a former three-time world champion F1 driver is another great that has raced for Ferrari. He is famously known for surviving a deadly crash at the Nürburgring, then racing about a month after he suffered third-degree burns and broken bones.
Lewis Hamilton would hope to repeat his glory of winning a world championship after switching from his long-time team Mercedes to Ferrari. The first race weekend of the 2025 season will happen between March 13-15, in Australia.
