Lewis Hamilton discovers 'years long' Ferrari answer after Mercedes wonder

Lewis Hamilton has explained how he discovered answers about Ferrari he has been waiting "years" for on the first day of Singapore Grand Prix practice.

Throughout Hamilton's tenure at Mercedes, Marina Bay would often be a track where Ferrari outperformed Mercedes, especially in qualifying, with Sebastian Vettel, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz sharing every pole between 2015 and 2023, with the exception of Nico Rosberg in '16 and Hamilton's iconic '18 lap.

As such, upon reflecting on a positive day for him in 2025 on his first visit with the Scuderia, Hamilton detailed the major questions he had always wanted the answer to about the package at this particular circuit. 

Hamilton finished 10th in FP2, but did not complete a representative timed lap on the soft tyres, owing to an abortion of his first lap, with the second not being able to be completed as he had taken the flag at session end, but the first two sector times were on par with session-topper Oscar Piastri.

Reflecting, Hamilton revealed his questions about Ferrari during his Mercedes spell.

"It was a good day, I enjoyed driving the car, it is the first time I'm driving a Ferrari at this track, and I've always wondered all these years from looking at on-boards, what the differences would be," Hamilton explained.

"It is the first time I got to feel that, and it was positive, but obviously, McLaren was very fast and getting a clean lap was not easy.

"But I feel there are a lot of positives [from Friday], a lot of learnings, and I'm quite happy with the progress we've made from [FP1].

"We made steps forward, so I feel like overnight, we probably won't change much, but of course, we'll try to refine the setup and see if we can extract a little bit more to get as close as we can to the McLarens."