Lewis Hamilton provided backup as F1 legend criticizes Ferrari for poor start to the season

F1 legend Jacques Villeneuve feels Lewis Hamilton has hardly put a foot wrong this season, and the poor start of the year should fall on Ferrari. The British driver joined the team this season after a decade-long partnership with Mercedes. The start of the season, however, has not been great.

Ferrari was a team that almost won the championship last season against McLaren and only lost out in the last round. The team had impressive momentum going into 2025, and many expected a title challenge from the Italian team.

Compared to what the expectations were, Ferrari has capitulated with what has been a poor start to the year. The first race in Melbourne saw both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc qualify on the 4th row. The second race weekend in China was a bit of a rollercoaster as Hamilton won the sprint, but when the Grand Prix segment of the weekend began, the team fell off.

To make things worse, both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified from the race. Commending Lewis Hamilton's start at Ferrari, Jacques Villeneuve said that the driver won the sprint in a car that wasn't the fastest. He told Cardplayer,

"He's won a sprint race. He's had a great start. His Saturday in China was incredible because it wasn't the best car, it wasn't a winning car, and he was really on it. He maximised the fact that he was on pole and controlled that sprint race."

He added,

"From what I heard Ferrari then made some changes for the actual race and it just wasn't as good but anyway, they got disqualified. It’s more a bad start to a season for Ferrari than it is for Lewis."

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Lewis Hamilton's DSQ at China was mystifying

After the race in China, both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were disqualified from the race. In the case of Leclerc, the disqualification was a result of the car being underweight, something that can be put down to the driver running an extended second stint.

Hamilton was disqualified for excessive wear on the skid block, and this was something that confused Jacques Villeneuve, who said that this could be down to the setup of the car. He said,

"And then Lewis, with the skid block hitting; the cars spend their whole race hitting the ground so the fact that the skid block was halved by 0.5 mm, that’s a lot,"

He added,

"There’s really something strange with the setup if they manage to eat so much of the skid. "It's really hard to go through that. It’s really strange. They would have seen it in the sprint race so the setup change they made for that race was not the best."

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc will be heading to Japan this weekend and hoping for a better run this time around.