Hamilton joined Ferrari this season, but while the Briton holds F1 records for most pole positions, podiums, victories and is tied for World titles, he has struggled to adapt to the SF-25.
Hamilton has failed to add to his impressive stats in his 14 starts with Ferrari, while his team-mate Leclerc has five podiums this season and, at the Hungarian Grand Prix, registered his and the team’s first pole position of the campaign.
Hamilton revealed he’s been sending Ferrari documents with suggestions about how to improve the SF-25.
“I’ve sent documents, I’ve done [that] through the year,” the 40-year-old said. “After the first few races, I did a full document for the team. Then during this break [between Britain and Belgium], I had another two documents that I sent in, and so they would come in and want to address those.”
That led to concerns that Leclerc could be frozen out with Ferrari’s development leaning towards Hamilton’s suggestions.
However, the Monegasque driver put that to rest as he confirmed that he too been preparing his points for Ferrari.
“At the end of the day we are both pushing to try and make Ferrari better,” Leclerc said.
“He’s preparing his points, I’m preparing my points and then we are doing big meetings where we are both inside the meetings, and then we speak about those points that we want to improve.
“So, of course, we are aligned with everything together with the team, and everybody is pushing in the same direction so that there’s no stress whatsoever.”
According to a report from La Gazzetta dello Sport, one of the big issues that Hamilton has raised in his documents to Ferrari is engine braking.
The Ferrari engine operates differently from what he experienced at Mercedes, and he’s struggling to find the braking ‘feel’ that he wants, which is hurting his corner entry.
He’s reportedly asked for information about Ferrari’s all-new 2026 power unit to help ‘eliminate’ the problem for next season.
Leclerc reckons Hamilton’s experience from Mercedes is valuable in helping Ferrari in the future.
“I think it’s always interesting to have a person and, in that case, Lewis coming from a very different culture, from a very different team, from working with Mercedes-Benz for so many years and to obviously point out a few of the things,” he said.
“I don’t think that this is very different to the team-mates [that] I’ve had in my career in a way that we are all here to make the team better, and we are all doing this kind of documents in order to point out those points. So on that there’s nothing different.
“However, obviously it’s a unique point of view and Lewis had an incredible career, so these are things that we are looking closely.
“But it didn’t only start it now. It starts from the first race where you have the first points where things are different and you’ve got to get used to and other things that you want to change and this is part of the process. So I don’t think there’s anything standing out now.
“I think maybe it’s the first time he said it so that’s why it makes such a reaction, but it’s nothing particular to this moment.”
