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Lewis Hamilton believes he is in the “best place” he has been with his Ferrari team with a new car that carries his “DNA”.

Hamilton’s debut season with Ferrari was disappointing, with the seven-time champion failing to take a podium for the first time in his career and finishing sixth in the drivers’ championship, behind his teammate Charles Leclerc in fifth. By the end of the year he was clearly disenchanted and openly critical, describing his season as a “nightmare”.

Ferrari have looked promising in pre-season testing this year and at the third and final test in Bahrain Hamilton, who has regrouped over the winter, presented a buoyant figure, positive and optimistic about the forthcoming challenge.

“I’ve obviously gone through quite a bit and you know left everything, all of last year behind me,” he said. “I spent a lot of time rebuilding over this winter, refocusing, really getting my body and my mind to a much better place. I generally feel personally in the best place that I’ve been in a long time with rearranging things within my team.”

Last year, Hamilton joined Ferrari at the end of a stable period of regulations and with the car already designed but this season, having been in place with the team, he has had the chance to enjoy an input into the new model.

“Last year we were locked into a car that ultimately I inherited,” he said. “This is a car that I’ve been able to be a part of developing on the simulator for the last 10 months, eight months and so like a bit of my DNA is within it, so I’m more connected to this one for sure.”

The British driver was also clear that, despite the travails of 2025, he was committed to what he viewed as a long-term project at Ferrari. “My belief in the team is still absolutely the same,” he said. “I understand the faith in this team and what they’re capable of and that’s why I joined the team.”

“I knew it wasn’t gonna be an overnight thing where we’d have success immediately, that’s why I signed a longer deal, because I knew it was a process and I feel like we’ve also learned a huge amount from last year as a team.”

The sport’s governing body the FIA has also announced it will attempt to end the ongoing row over Mercedes’s controversial use of a loophole in the regulations involving the compression ratio of their engine. It is believed Mercedes have stolen a march on their rivals by exploiting a higher ratio than the 16:1 mandated when the engine is running because it is measured when “cold”, or at ambient temperatures.

The other engine manufacturers have been aggrieved at what they see as an unfair advantage, if one that is still within the letter of the regulations and after a meeting of the power unit advisory committee, the FIA has allowed a proposal that as of 1 August – after 13 of the season’s 24 races – the rules would be changed so that the compression ratio would also be measured at a representative operating temperature of 130°C.

The vote on the proposal will be decided in the next 10 days and requires a super-majority of five of the seven on the committee, which consists of the FIA, F1 and the five manufacturers, Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, Audi and Honda.