Ferrari handed stark 'confidence game' warning with Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc

Former F1 driver Anthony Davidson is hopeful Ferrari listened to drivers Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc over the F1 winter break to ensure they hit the ground running this year.

Leclerc and Hamilton endured a difficult 2025 campaign, with neither driver winning a grand prix, and in the case of the seven-time F1 champion, failing to score a podium for the first time in his F1 career.

Last season, in attempting to address some of the difficulties he was encountering at Ferrari, following his years with Mercedes, which helped him win six of his titles, Hamilton went so far as to send documents to team boss Fred Vasseur and his wider team with suggestions for improvements.

Ferrari has already implemented one change by replacing Hamilton's race engineer, although no announcement has yet been made as to who will succeed Riccardo Adami.

Davidson would like to believe that Hamilton and Leclerc have not been ignored, and that changes have been applied. 

"Who knows how the performance is going to be this year," said Davidson, speaking on Sky Sports F1.

"The one thing we do know is that they have two great racing drivers, two very experienced racing drivers that the team should listen to.

"Hopefully they listened to both of them over the winter, or even before that, and have channelled their energy, their focus, into giving the drivers what they feel they need out on track, and what's important to them - how you go about building a modern-day F1 car to the best of your ability to fit what the driver needs.

"It's a confidence game. The driver needs to feel comfortable and confident inside the car."

Highlighting what he saw with Hamilton last year following his move, Davidson added: :Lewis, particularly, a new driver within that team last year, didn't feel confident in that car.

"We saw moments where he was having spins all by himself, going off the track all by himself, moments we've never seen before from Lewis, at least on a regular basis.

"It rang alarm bells for me, and it should have as well for the team, because it proves that the car wasn't to his liking.

"It's not always up to the driver to get used to the car, [and the team saying] 'This is the car. You deal with it'.

"It's a team game, and you should rely on those two drivers to optimise the tools that you have back at the factory."