Lewis Hamilton’s long-awaited first victory under Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur did not arrive in Barcelona on June 14, 2026. In fact, it began more than two decades earlier in Formula 3.
Back then, a 20-year-old Hamilton won the opening round at Hockenheim in the Formula 3 Euro Series while driving for Vasseur’s ASM team, launching a dominant campaign that produced 15 wins from 20 races. The following year, he stepped up to GP2 with Vasseur’s newly formed ART Grand Prix outfit and secured another title that helped pave the way to his McLaren Formula 1 debut in 2007.
By the time Hamilton reunited with Vasseur in Formula 1, he was already a seven-time world champion, the most successful driver in the sport’s history and one of its defining global figures.
“Sir Lewis Hamilton,” as he is now known, had long since outgrown his early career status. Yet the foundations of his relationship with Vasseur had never changed.
“We had amazing success in F3, and also in GP2,” Hamilton said in 2024 after agreeing to join Ferrari while still completing his final Mercedes season. “That’s really where the foundation of our relationship started. We always remained in touch. I thought he would be an amazing team manager at some stage. When he got to Ferrari, I was just so happy for him. I think the stars aligned.”
But the Hamilton who arrived at Ferrari was no longer widely seen as being in his peak years.
Turning 40 ahead of his first season with the Scuderia, he came off a difficult final stretch at Mercedes. While he still managed standout moments — including a win at Silverstone and a victory inherited at Spa — consistency had begun to drift toward younger teammate George Russell.
The question of decline followed him into Maranello. And at times, it appeared difficult to dismiss.
A missed pole position in Barcelona by just 0.064 seconds raised familiar questions about marginal speed. Yet his race performance told a different story: a three-stop strategy executed with precision and a sustained charge through the field against one of the fastest cars of the season.
Last year, however, the narrative was far less forgiving. A sprint win in China offered brief relief, but Ferrari struggled for stability. Hamilton often lagged behind Charles Leclerc and became embroiled in tense radio exchanges with engineer Riccardo Adami, fueling speculation about internal strain.
Vasseur publicly dismissed suggestions of unrest, accusing sections of the media of exaggeration. But even within Ferrari, the challenge of extracting peak performance from a transitioning champion was evident.
At times, Hamilton’s career arc appeared to mirror late-stage declines of other greats — moments of brilliance punctuated by inconsistency, not unlike Valentino Rossi in MotoGP or Michael Schumacher in his Mercedes return.
The early optimism of his Ferrari move gave way to a more grinding reality: searching for tenths that were increasingly elusive.
Those margins defined his season.
Critics pointed to age as a limiting factor. Supporters pointed to context.
At Spa last July, Hamilton confirmed he had engaged Ferrari leadership — including chairman John Elkann, CEO Benedetto Vigna and Vasseur — with detailed technical requests. He also held meetings with senior engineers, outlining structural and performance adjustments he believed were necessary to improve competitiveness.
Those demands placed Vasseur in a difficult position: balancing the authority of a seven-time champion with the realities of a large, traditional organization adapting to change.
Ferrari’s internal response evolved gradually, including a key shift in race engineering personnel that saw Carlo Santi take a more prominent role in Hamilton’s setup.
Vasseur, however, downplayed any single factor after Sunday’s breakthrough.
“I don’t want to put Carlo in front or whatever. It’s a huge effort from everybody,” he said. “The fit between Carlo and Lewis is a good one. But we react as a group, in good and bad moments.”
Behind the scenes, Santi’s influence has been increasingly visible. The 52-year-old Italian, now standing on the podium alongside Hamilton after his first Ferrari win, last celebrated a rostrum appearance in 2018 with Kimi Raikkonen. He later moved into a factory role before returning trackside this season.
Hamilton has already referred to him as his “Italian Bono,” a sign of growing trust within the pairing.
Technical adjustments have also played a role, including a switch in brake supplier away from Brembo — a significant change given Ferrari’s long-standing relationship with the company — and a move toward Carbon Industrie components.
Hamilton acknowledged the scale of internal revisions he had pushed for.
There were, he said, “dozens” of changes he had repeatedly raised with management.
After Barcelona, he credited Vasseur directly for enabling them.
“I wouldn’t be in this team without Fred,” Hamilton said. “He made it happen. Last year was very tough for him, but he kept believing. I’m very grateful.”
Vasseur, in turn, rejected the idea that he should take credit for the turnaround.
“I have zero merit on this,” he said. “It’s more Lewis himself. He was able to reset after a difficult period and keep pushing. That commitment is a huge support for the entire team.”
Ferrari’s victory in Barcelona may ultimately be viewed less as a turning point in a single race and more as the product of a relationship that began in junior formulas, survived two decades of evolution and has now delivered its first Formula 1 triumph together.
For Vasseur, it validates his decision to bring Hamilton to Ferrari.
For Hamilton, it raises a different question entirely: not whether he still belongs at the front of Formula 1 — but how far he can still go.
