Lewis Hamilton annoints 9x and 6x F1 world champions as the teams expected to be 'one of the quickest'

Lewis Hamilton has pinpointed 9x world champion McLaren and 6x world champion Red Bull as the teams that are possibly the "quickest" as we get ready for the 2025 F1 season. The pre-season test was the first time for everyone, including Hamilton, to get some time in the car before the racing began.

Hamilton is in his first ever year as a Ferrari driver, and that has attracted a lot of attention. He shocked the world last season when he announced that he was leaving Mercedes and moving to the Italian squad.

This ended a partnership that began in 2013 and yielded Hamilton six world championships. The F1 legend is now at Ferrari and hopes to achieve that elusive 8th world title that'll make him the most successful driver in history.

The driver has been doing an extensive program, as a part of which he's run the two-year-old Ferraris. He's also had one and a half days of testing for him with the hope of getting on top of a new car.

Talking about how the preseason test went, the driver was quick to point out that testing times can be misleading. With that being said, the driver did feel that McLaren and Red Bull should be expected to be two of the quicker cars on the grid as the season kicks off. He told media, including Sportskeeda:

"McLaren did a great run, and I think also Max [Verstappen] did a decent one, even with the temperatures [on the final morning of testing]. It's hard to know what fuel loads everyone is running, as we're all doing our own programmes, so you have to take everything with a pinch of salt."

He added:

"But they [McLaren] won the constructors' last year. We expect them to be one of the quickest, if not the quickest, as with Red Bull, who dominated for many, many years."

Lewis Hamilton excited to go racing with Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton is heading into a new season with Ferrari but will also have a challenge in place in the form of Charles Leclerc. The young driver has been a part of the Italian team since 2019 and is considered one of the best on the grid.

Talking about the season, Hamilton admitted that he's not a big fan of testing, but he's extremely happy with the time he's had in the car to understand and get used to it. Looking forward to the 2025 F1 season, he said:

"Still I'm not a fan of testing, but I've really enjoyed the testing that I've had this year. I mean, I'm super grateful for the TPC testing that I got to do. If I only had this day and a half [of F1 pre-season testing], I definitely wouldn't be in the position I'm in now, in terms of how comfortable I feel with the car. There's still some ways to go, but at this point I'm just excited to get racing."

Lewis Hamilton's first few races are going to attract a lot of attention from different areas, but it would be interesting to see how he gets on with a new team at the advanced age of 40.