Hamilton's Monza Struggles: Ferrari's Title Dilemma

Lewis Hamilton walked out of Monza with the tifosi’s roar ringing in his ears, but not in the way he imagined when he arrived at Ferrari. Sixth place, a bruising opening lap with Charles Leclerc and a widening title gap left the seven-time world champion in no doubt: if Ferrari were going to back one driver for this championship, that moment has already gone.

“It’s far too late for those decisions to come,” he said. “It’s too late. All I can do is just try and turn up. I’ll get up tomorrow morning and I’ll give it my best.”

A Ferrari fight on lap one

The tone of Ferrari’s home race was set within seconds of the lights going out.

Hamilton launched from fourth, Leclerc from third. Into the Variante del Rettifilo, two scarlet cars went wheel-to-wheel. On the exit of the chicane, Hamilton was eased onto the grass as Leclerc held his ground, the Briton bouncing over the runoff and tumbling down the order to 10th.

The move lit up social media. Inside the cockpit, it lit a fuse.

Leclerc would not last much longer. Pushing hard through Parabolica, he lost the rear and slammed into the barriers in a high-speed crash that triggered a red flag and silenced the grandstands for a moment. Ferrari’s home hero was out. Their new signing became their only hope.

Yet when the race restarted, Hamilton never truly joined the lead battle again. While Mercedes locked out a commanding one-two at Monza, Ferrari’s number 44 spent the afternoon in recovery mode, climbing back to sixth but never threatening the podium that had seemed within reach at the start.

Title tilt slipping away

The numbers tell their own story. Hamilton arrived in Italy level on points with George Russell, his former Mercedes team-mate, in the fight for second in the standings. He leaves 10 points behind Russell and a huge distance adrift of the man setting the pace, race winner Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

“I think from today, we’ve just lost so much ground to [Mercedes] on points,” Hamilton admitted.

He still refuses to wave the white flag, but he knows the mountain he faces.

“It’s never over until it’s over. I don’t know how many points it is now, but I’m sure it’s 60, 70. It’s an amount that, with the pace that they have, it’s a very, very difficult amount to close out.”

Ferrari’s decision not to impose clear team orders earlier in the season now hangs over them. The questions that surfaced at Zandvoort returned with more bite at Monza.

Zandvoort frustrations resurface

In the Netherlands last month, Hamilton felt Ferrari cost him a shot at the podium by keeping Leclerc ahead for too long despite the Monegasque being on a different strategy and slower tyres. Hamilton, on fresher rubber and clearly quicker, sat bottled up behind his team-mate.

When Ferrari finally pitted Leclerc, Hamilton’s radio message cut through the team’s usual politeness: “Great way of wasting time, good job.” He later apologised, but the irritation was obvious.

Those frustrations have now been sharpened by what happened in Italy. From Hamilton’s point of view, the first-lap clash was not just a racing incident; it was a moment that underlined the lack of clarity inside the team.

Speaking after his crash, Leclerc admitted the battle into Turn 1 had been on the edge.

“It was way too close into turn one,” he said, adding he did not know if the cars had touched. “I was quite a lot on the inside kerb and tried to make the corner, which I didn’t do it tight enough. And then I only saw in the mirrors what happened, which is never what you want between two cars of the same team.”

Hamilton’s view was more blunt.

“I was ahead in turn two by the ethics, I was ahead. There was no ‘we’ in it.”

“I don’t race dirty”

With the tension between the pair now plain, the obvious question followed: should Ferrari fans fear a full-blown team-mate feud?

Hamilton rejected that idea immediately.

“Look, I don’t race dirty. I’ve always raced clean and fairly and always left space. So I don’t think they should be worried about me.

“I’ve come into the team and tried to be respectful of space and definitely not put the team in jeopardy. I stand by that and that’s all I can talk about.”

The message was clear. Hamilton wants Ferrari to know he will not be the one to drag the team into civil war. But he also wants them to recognise what is at stake if the internal battles are not managed.

Vasseur’s dilemma

Team principal Frédéric Vasseur did not hide his displeasure at seeing his two red cars so close to disaster on lap one.

The clash, he said, was “not good”. Yet he was also quick to point out that every top team has to handle these flashpoints. The bigger question now is whether Ferrari move decisively behind one driver, and if so, when.

“Now, to see if we have a team order or whatever, I think that the comparison that I made was that last year, [Oscar] Piastri was leading McLaren at this stage of the season, and if McLaren put everything on Piastri, [Red Bull’s] Max Verstappen would have been champion.

“For sure, at one stage you have to make a decision, but I think it was too early to make a decision before Monza. Now we have time to discuss with the guys.”

Hamilton, though, believes the issue runs deeper than just who gets priority. For him, Ferrari must change how they think, how they talk, how they react in the heat of battle.

“If we continue to travel the same path, we get the same result,” he said. “And it’s like we keep getting the same result. We’ve got to change things because it’s not helping us to move forward. I think they’re receptive to it and we’ll take it offline.”

Monza was supposed to be a celebration of Ferrari’s new era with one of the sport’s greatest drivers in red. Instead, it exposed the fault lines in a partnership still searching for its rhythm, while Mercedes and Antonelli stride away.

The question now is not whether Hamilton can drag himself back into the title fight. It is whether Ferrari will move quickly enough off that “same path” he warned about, before this season becomes another one that got away.