Lewis Hamilton is currently enduring one of his toughest Formula 1 campaigns to date, and his Ferrari debut has not gone to plan.

The 40-year-old would have hoped that entering the summer break, he would already have his first podium for the Maranello-based outfit, but he hasn’t been particularly close.

Hamilton has been thwarted by some poor Ferrari development over the winter, which has left him frustrated and with one eye on the 2026 F1 regulations already.

While sixth in the drivers’ championship wouldn’t beat his worst result with Mercedes, he will have expected a lot more from a team that finished 14 points shy of a title last year.

Hamilton is now ‘leveraging’ Ferrari to get more influence with their strategies. He wants to take charge of his own races a little more.

After a significant FIA change, Hamilton’s Ferrari problems became even worse. It feels like a complete reset is the only thing that would fix his current woes.

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Martin Brundle predicted that it would take ‘time’ for Lewis Hamilton to adjust to Ferrari

Hamilton must rediscover his greatest strength if he wants any chance of achieving a dream eighth title in the future. His one-lap pace needs to at least make a partial return.

Looking back on last year, ‘90%’ of Ferrari insiders disagreed with signing Hamilton and it seems that they have only been proven right so far.

He has gone more than 750 days without a pole position and is struggling just as much to match his teammate over the course of a weekend.

Martin Brundle predicted that it may be the case back in March, telling Sky Sports that he expected some time for an adjustment to take place.

“He’s got a new race engineer, Riccardo Adami, and has got to understand how Ferrari works, which will be diametrically opposed to how Mercedes works in terms of culture, I suspect, in terms of procedures,” he said.

“Lewis is going to have to find out where all the green buttons are, and I expect it will take him a little bit of time to get used to that, along with speaking some Italian.”

Why Lewis Hamilton’s recent Ferrari performances have been so strange

Ferrari have already suffered one ‘complete failure’ for 2026 after a rear suspension upgrade failed to bring the expected setup benefits at Spa at the Hungaroring in previous weeks.

It shows that the correlation between what their data is telling them back at the factory, and what they actually produce on track, is not very strong.

If they want to be title contenders again in the future, everything must run seamlessly. McLaren are organised and they’re currently dominating proceedings.

The reason why Hamilton’s form is so strange is because his teammate has been so strong at the same time. Leclerc took pole in Hungary, while Hamilton was 12th.

In the race, he struggled just as much, while Leclerc dropped off about halfway through. The SF25 clearly still has its gremlins.