Just over a year ago, Lewis Hamilton announced a groundbreaking move to the Ferrari Formula 1 team after being dedicated to Mercedes for over a decade — and not everyone is convinced it’s the right move.

But there are others like former F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya who are confident that once Hamilton gets up to speed, he’ll be unstoppable.

Lewis Hamilton will ‘win everything’ at Ferrari

Much has been made about Lewis Hamilton’s big move from Mercedes — the team that afforded him six of his seven World Drivers’ Championships — to Ferrari for the 2025 season.

Pundits have theorized that Hamilton, who turned 40 earlier this year, is past his prime, and that his younger teammate Charles Leclerc will put on a clinic when it comes to outshining the former WDC.

Hamilton has been warned that team orders will come into play early in the season if he doesn’t get up to speed, that he’ll be on the back foot in terms of car design, and that he’s about to enter a drastically different team environment than the one he’s used to.

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We won’t be able to fairly evaluate Hamilton in his new role for several weeks, as the Australian Grand Prix will be his first opportunity to drive a new Ferrari in anger. But for all the hand-wringing, there are still pundits out there expecting to be comfortably surprised by a driver of Hamilton’s caliber.

One such pundit is Juan Pablo Montoya, a seven-time Grand Prix winner who leveraged his skill in multiple different race series to win the Indy 500 and Daytona 24 twice.

Montoya firmly believes that Lewis Hamilton is more than aware that a team swap will come with challenges.

“Lewis is mature enough to appreciate that in the short-term he is going to struggle a little bit, learning the Ferrari thing,” the Colombian racer stated.

“Charles is going to feel like he’s got the upper hand. But give it about six or seven races, and if the car is competitive, Lewis is going to win everything.”

In 2024, Ferrari was the team best situated to challenge McLaren for a World Constructors’ Championship, but a mid-season upgrade that introduced a distracting amount of porpoising threw the team off track.

Hopes are high for 2025, but there are still several weeks before we’ll truly see how Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc fare with the Scuderia. Until then, it’s all just speculation.

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