Sebastian Vettel has detailed the advice he gave Lewis Hamilton about settling in at Ferrari following his bombshell move from Mercedes.
Hamilton left Mercedes after 12 seasons ahead of the 2025 season, after also spending six seasons in a British-based team in McLaren, for Ferrari.
He is the first full-time British driver for the Scuderia since Eddie Irvine, but has struggled to find performance for his new team, and is on the verge of failing to score a podium for the first time in his grand prix career across a season unless he can do so in Qatar or Abu Dhabi.
Vettel himself made the move from a British-based team in Red Bull to Ferrari 10 years ago, as he revealed how he reached out to Hamilton to offer advice about assimilating into the Italian culture - something the four-time champion believes the seven-time one must prioritise.
"For Lewis, he was with a British team, and every team is very different. He was with Mercedes for a long, long time and then to move to Ferrari, it is going to be a huge difference," Vettel told F1's Beyond the Grid podcast.
"Because the heart and culture of the team is Italian, the language is English, so he understands everybody in the tea, but there are also employees that he doesn't understand because they don't speak English, or speak English very well, and if you don't speak a very well, do you really get to know the people and do you get the culture?
"That is a crucial mistake I made. I learned Italian, took classes and got along and understood, but I wasn't perfect, and I should have really studied Italian more and spent more time in Italy to understand the culture more, because the culture is the people.
"I told Lewis before he made the move, I said: 'The only advice I can give you, the best advice I can give you is to learn the language, and learn it really, really well.'
"The way to learn a language is that you have to expose yourself so you start to speak to the people when you are in the country, so you're exposing yourself to the culture, and the rest will then fall into place.
"With racing and when you talk about the set-up, you could argue it is irrelevant, but for the bigger picture, to get the culture and the spirit is so important."
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