FERRARI: The Great Anticipation.

HAMILTON-LECLERC CHASE FOR THE WORLD TITLE "READY FOR THE DREAM"

Originally Published in: Gazzetta dello Sport

Originally Published on: March 12th 2025

Originally Written by: Giulia Toninelli

Eyes focused on Australia, on the two stars who can bring the title back to Maranello after 17 years of drought.

ⓒ LA GAZZETTA DELLO SPORT

Above Melbourne, the sky is more uncertain than ever. It will be hot during the first weekend of the F1 season, with temperatures around 30 degrees. Sunday's weather, however, threatens rain and showers, altering every certainty and opening up possibilities for new strategies ahead of the first GP of the year. The climatic uncertainty is just the latest of many questions that will follow the start of the 2025 season in Australia. Among the seat changes, the market for prestigious technical figures, and the presence on the grid of five debutants, what raises the most anticipation is the presence of a seven-time world champion, Lewis Hamilton, dressed in red.

The wait

A journey, that of Hamilton with the Prancing Horse, which began on February 1, 2024, on the day of the announcement of his move from Mercedes to Ferrari, and continued with expectations and forecasts for over a year. On January 20, 2025, the first day in Maranello for the English champion unfolded, with the photograph, already ingrained in the collective memory, of his arrival in front of Enzo Ferrari's house. Then the first laps in Fiorano amidst the affection of fans, the official tests in Bahrain, and finally the grand event in Milan where, alongside his new teammate Charles Leclerc and team principal Fred Vasseur, Hamilton greeted fans in style before departing for Australia, with more than 20,000 present from all over Europe wishing the pair a season of success and great challenges.

We are ready

After months of preparation, including long sessions in the simulator, changes and adjustments necessary to arrive ready for the championship's first test, the Prancing Horse team is now focusing on the Melbourne GP and the uncertainties that still cloud the sky over the Australian city for the Rossa. The tests in Bahrain showed a fast Hamilton right away on the SF-25, ahead of teammate Leclerc for two consecutive days, but what caused concern was not the results of the pair, but rather the comparison with a McLaren that appeared much more mature and solid in race pace. The test results are only indicative, considering that the teams run with very different fuel loads, ballast, and engine mappings. "It will take at least four or five races to really understand the forces at play," said team principal Vasseur just before the start of the season, emphasizing how the first races of the championship will show tracks, temperatures, and race conditions that are definitely different, and that only the combination of all the data collected in the first months of driving will allow the teams to frame the real condition of their rivals for the title.

Leclerc and Hamilton, who arrived last weekend in Melbourne with the team to adjust to the significantly different Australian time zone, believe in the potential of the car and in the work done by the entire Scuderia during the winter, promising fans a title fight to carry on until the end of the season."We can fight for the World Championship: I'm serious, I believe it," said the seven-time world champion, driving the team forward with enthusiasm in his first year in red. "I feel ready; I will do everything to make it and to achieve this dream," added Leclerc, who will begin his seventh year with the Ferrari team in Australia. The two drivers of the Red team have different yet similar dreams. Each determined to win in what team principal Vasseur has already defined as "a healthy internal rivalry that will benefit everyone," but both ready to bring Ferrari back to the top, seventeen years since the last world championship victory, to see it overshadow competitors on the track. Bringing to the circuits that passion that has shadowed the entire team during the months of the Italian winter and continues to fuel the enthusiasm of all the fans.

[Translation proof reading by @F1REAKS / X]