What Hamilton's first Ferrari F1 win proves to 'yapping' critics
Lewis Hamilton had some punchy words for his Formula 1 critics after claiming his first victory for Ferrari in the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix sprint race
Lewis Hamilton believes his first win for Ferrari in the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix sprint race is a stepping stone in a process his “yapping” Formula 1 critics have underestimated.
After a disappointing first round of the season last week for Hamilton and Ferrari in Australia, where Charles Leclerc was eighth and Hamilton 10th, the Shanghai weekend has so far proved to be much more competitive for the team.
Hamilton’s shock sprint race pole was earned at least in part by McLaren underperforming but he converted it into victory on Saturday with minimum fuss and a late flourish as his advantage ballooned to almost seven seconds over Oscar Piastri.
Admitting that his first F1 weekend with Ferrari was “difficult”, Hamilton said afterwards that the contrast from Australia to China was down to how much had been learned from his and Ferrari’s first race weekend together, after realising his winter could not “shortcut” the process.
“I really do feel a lot of people underestimated the steep climb it is to get into a new team, to become acclimatised within a team, understanding, communication, all sorts of things,” he said.
“And the amount of critics and things people I've heard yapping along the way, just clearly not understanding, maybe because they've never had the experience, just unaware."
Elaborating on that in the post-sprint press conference, Hamilton said "people just love to be negative at any opportunity” and felt “certain individuals that I've admired for years, just talking out of turn, clearly just making uneducated guesses of what's going on”.
He returned to a pre-season narrative of praising Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso for being able to win so quickly with Ferrari, but this time stressed that to be able to succeed long-term was the main challenge.
“There's a real lack of appreciation that it is not easy moving to a new team that works completely different, a completely different characteristic of car.
“You don't just jump in and it's good. You look at Seb, look at Fernando, they did a great job when they joined the team in the early phases. But to build long-term success with the team takes time to build. And that's what I'm trying to do.”
Though Hamilton was better in Australia than it appeared on the outside, he was not comfortable in the car and chasing things all weekend. That has not been the case in China.
Hamilton admits Shanghai has been a good track for him over the years, so he is taking the step with a little pinch of salt. Nonetheless, this result followed Hamilton indicating on Thursday that he would start to set the car up differently in China, and impose his will a bit more after following Ferrari’s lead in Australia because he was still playing catch-up.
That first race weekend already gave him a better idea of what he likes - or, more importantly, dislikes - in the car and he said after the sprint he’s moved towards something that had been tried in testing.
“The set-up wasn’t really where I wanted to be,” Hamilton confirmed. “I came into this weekend, straight away I said ‘these are the things that I want to start with this weekend, this is more the direction’ and I'm much happier with that.
“That's something I had tested back in Bahrain and kind of veered off from there. So there's been a couple of changes but from the moment I started driving yesterday, I felt more at one with the car.
“And even through this race I'm still learning. I didn't get to do the race run in Bahrain. So the race in the wet was actually my first proper long run, really, of any significant amount of laps.
“I'm learning along the way this car, how to move the tools in order to make the car work where I want it to work.
“I'm really happy with how it came out, given that that is the case – but now I've got a much better knowledge of what the car likes and what I need to do to make it faster.”
A historic Ferrari advantage at play again?
Hamilton had to withstand some pressure from Max Verstappen mid-sprint but the benefit of clean air, combined with the Ferrari appearing to be less prone to graining of the front left than its rivals, meant Hamilton’s pace held on much better than those chasing.
Even once Piastri cleared Verstappen, the McLaren driver was unable to make inroads - and actually fell from 2.6s behind once he got into second, to 6.9s behind at the flag, losing a second a lap to Hamilton in the closing stages.
Everyone was managing with severe front left graining, although the Ferraris to a lesser extent.
Not only was Hamilton edging clear out front, but Leclerc came back into the mix, too. Having fallen away more than 10 seconds behind Hamilton at the front and even a few seconds back from the Mercedes of George Russell ahead of him, Leclerc started to close back in during the final few laps.
Once he caught Russell, and couldn’t pass him, Leclerc’s gap to Hamilton ballooned again. 
Leclerc said there were some small differences between the cars and he would go towards Hamilton's set-up for grand prix qualifying later on Saturday, but overall Leclerc conceded he has simply been missing something so far compared to Hamilton.
"The potential is there,” said Leclerc. “Clearly. Because Lewis is using it.
"I am not - so I've got some work to do.
"Historically I've always been struggling like crazy here. But that's not an excuse - obviously you've got to learn, and for now it doesn't seem like I'm doing the right things in the car."
Still, Leclerc’s relative flourish showed that Ferrari overall seemed to have the best race pace in the sprint, even if that is slightly exaggerated by Piastri spending so many laps behind Verstappen, and damaging his tyres more.
The Ferrari was strong at times last year in races where tyre management was dominated by front-left graining, notably at Monza where Leclerc won on a one-stop strategy nobody thought was possible.
There was also a little front graining at Austin, where Ferrari finished one-two, although that cleared far more quickly so was not such a major factor.
A bit of historical precedent, and what happened in the sprint, raises hopes that, if Ferrari can be as competitive in main qualifying as it was on Friday, both Hamilton and Leclerc can be real forces on Sunday.
However, Hamilton is still trying to emphasise the need for patience. In his immediate post-race interview on the grid, Hamilton leant on a couple of adages - “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and then, amusingly, “it’s a marathon, not a sprint”.
This race literally was, and that was reflected in the slightly muted response to the first ‘win’, such that it is – but it clearly still meant more than a normal sprint win might.
“It's hard to put into words what it feels like,” Hamilton said. “Obviously it's the sprint race, it’s not the main race. But that's just a good stepping stone to where I'm working towards.”
