One year on from the lowest point of his Ferrari career to date, Lewis Hamilton has said he takes pride in the way he has reversed his form over the past 12 months.
After qualifying 12th for last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix, Hamilton claimed he was “absolutely useless” and said Ferrari “probably need to change driver.”
The disappointing result came in the middle of an underwhelming debut season in red, in which the seven-time world champion struggled to match teammate Charles Leclerc and failed to score a grand prix podium all year.
Following changes to Formula 1’s regulations over the winter, Hamilton has returned as a rejuvenated force on the grid, scoring his first win for Ferrari at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix in June and outscoring Leclerc by 33 points over the first ten races of the season.
“I’m definitely proud of everyone in the team and also I am definitely proud of myself for getting myself out of the place that I was in,” Hamilton said ahead of this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix when asked to reflect on the last year.
“One day when I do my documentary, I’ll tell you all about that weekend and what led up into it. But to come from there, even coming into this week I felt a lot from last week [at the Belgian Grand Prix] and I arrive worlds away from where I was last year.”
Hamilton has spoken regularly about changes Ferrari has made behind the scenes to suit his preferences this season, and he said they had been crucial for putting him in the fight for victories in 2026.
“I feel really grateful for the way we’ve developed as a team,” he added. “The pieces to the puzzle that have moved and come together. And now we come here with a great car, with a great package as a whole that we can fight with.”
Hamilton has finished the last two races in Britain and Belgium in third and fourth, while his teammate Leclerc has finished the same two races first and second.
The British driver said small miss-steps over those two weekends had taken him out of contention for victory, but was reassured by the performance shown by Leclerc.
“Every weekend the goal is to try to extract the most from the weekend,” Hamilton said. “I would say we have had a couple of good weekends and we got to Silverstone, started out well and one step in the wrong direction and it took us away from competing for a win.
“The same thing last week, so that just shows how things can go in this sport. But I’m still grateful that we’ve had consistency, still scored points, but on pure pace the front runners weren’t that far away.
“Normally Kimi [Antonelli] is so fast he pulls away and he wasn’t ballistic [in Belgium] and we were a lot closer than we thought. So to go to two circuits where we thought we would be quite far behind and to have Charles win and finish second shows that we are moving in the right direction.”
