Lewis Hamilton: Ferrari ‘not worried’ by new driver’s recent form for Mercedes

Ferrari will launch their 2025 car in Maranello on 19 January, the day after F1’s first official “season launch”, which is being held at the O2 in London.

Vasseur said Hamilton would have no further public engagements for the team.

“We have to be fully focused on the season,” he said. “It will be a very tight period between the first day and the launch and I want to have everybody fully focused on performance.

“We have the launch of the championship and the launch of the car. It is two events and for me it is far too much. Or it is far enough, let’s say. I want to be focused on development and performance and not on the show.”

And Vasseur spoke for the first time about his talks with Hamilton last winter that led to him joining Ferrari.

“In 2023 we won more races than Mercedes so it was not difficult to convince him Ferrari would be a good project,” he said.

“He had the project to drive for Ferrari in his mind for at least 22 or 23 years because we were discussing this in 2004. It was not too difficult.

“Sometimes it is also a matter of coincidence or to align all the planets, that he is on the market, that Ferrari have a seat available and so on. The contact was an easy one. We started to discuss one year ago and it was not difficult to convince him.”

Ferrari lost out on the constructors’ championship to McLaren by 14 points at the final race of 2024 and Vasseur said he expected next season to be another close fight between the top four teams, including Red Bull and Mercedes.

“What we have to do to win next year is about details,” he said. “We made good improvements in every area but we are still missing 14 points in the championship. It is a lot and almost nothing, it is a DNF, a race incident, a strategic decision.

“We are speaking about details on every single pillar. Every single mistake, every decision will make a huge decision. I am sure next year the championship will be also tight and we can’t let one point run away.”