10 mistakes Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari blunder list as dreadful season ends on sour note

Lewis Hamilton raised eyebrows this week when, ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, he revealed that he has been keeping a list of every mistake he and his Ferrari team have made this year. Given how awful most of the season has been for the seven-time champion, there's probably enough there to fill the biggest notepad he could find in his local Monaco corner shop.

Hamilton turns 41 in January and knows he has limited opportunities left to try to win an eighth Formula 1 title before he retires. That is why the 2026 season is so important, and why he plans to work hard over the winter with his colleagues to not only build a fast car but to also eradicate some of those costly errors.

With the season finale looming, what better time to take a stroll down memory lane and look back on some of those errors made by Hamilton and Ferrari over the course of what has been a thoroughly disappointing debut campaign?

Australian GP - 10th-placed finish on debut

After all the pre-season hype, it was hardly an inspiring debut for Hamilton in red. He finished just 10th, scoring one single point, in his first Grand Prix as mixed weather caused plenty of chaos Down Under – leading to the Scuderia getting their reading of the radar all wrong.

A late shower saw many switch back to intermediate tyres but Ferrari stuck with the slicks for an extra lap which saw both drivers lose buckets of time. Charles Leclerc also only managed eighth and team principal Frederic Vasseur admitted: "We made the wrong call. We thought, mistakenly, that the shower wasn't going to last long."

Chinese GP - Disqualification after Sprint win joy

Shanghai brought the brightest moment of Hamilton's whole year, when he won the Sprint race. It was just his second outing as a Ferrari driver and sparked hope that he would enjoy plenty of success in red, but that remains his only victory to date.

And, to make matter worse, Ferrari suffered perhaps their lowest point of the year just 24 hours later when both their drivers were disqualified from the Grand Prix. Hamilton's car had too much wear to the plank underneath the car while Leclerc's machine was too light, both of them failing post-race technical checks.

Spanish GP - Hamilton flatters to deceive in 'terrible' race

While those first two examples were fully Ferrari's errors, Hamilton took all the blame for a horrible Sunday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. He qualified well, starting fifth and ahead of team-mate Leclerc, but lost out to the Monegasque just nine laps in.

That set the tone and his dreadful drive was capped by Nico Hulkenberg overtaking him in a Sauber late on. He finished sixth, which in isolation was not an awful result but Hamilton described his performance as "terrible" and said it was: "The worst race I've experienced balance-wise."

Belgian GP - Q1 exit in both Sprint and main race

Qualifying has been Hamilton's Achilles' Heel for some time now and that was on full display in Belgium. The Sprint format was in use which provided two opportunities to get it right. Or, in Hamilton's case, who opportunities to suffer.

An unusual lock-up on his rear tyres cost him in qualifying for the Sprint, which the Brit said had never happened to him before and he blamed a new part on his Ferrari for causing it. But he was self-critical again a day later when a track limits violation left him in the bottom five for the Grand Prix, admitting it was "a very, very poor performance from myself".

Hungarian GP - Hamilton hits rock bottom

Hamilton wears his heart on his sleeve and has produced some difficult-to-watch interviews in the past, but none of them compare to his comments after qualifying in Budapest. "It's me every time – I'm useless," he said at one of the lowest points of his entire F1 career.

Team-mate Leclerc took pole position, reinforcing Hamilton's mindset at the time that he was the common denominator. He added: "The team have no problem. You've seen the car's on pole. So we probably need to change driver." It was the last weekend before a summer break which the seven-time champion desperately needed.

Dutch GP - Costly crash scuppers home race chances

Not that a few weeks off led to any sort of change in fortunes. Hamilton had a pretty decent weekend, qualifying narrowly behind Leclerc, until the race in which he slid off track and into a barrier after touching a painted white line which was wet and slippery.

"It's not a normal sort of thing for me to have, [to] crash out of a race," he later said, clearly surprised by what was indeed a rare type of error. To make matters worse, because he could not serve a time penalty given to him for speeding under yellow flags before the race, Hamilton took a five-place grid drop with him to Ferrari's home race at Monza.

Azerbaijan GP - Wrong tyres and out of fuel in qualifying

After a run of personal errors, back to a classic Ferrari blunder in Baku. To be fair, it was a chaotic session which was red-flagged a record six times due to a swathe of crashes and lasted nearly two hours. Leclerc was one of those who hit the barrier, but still qualified ahead of Hamilton.

"Everyone ahead of me basically had the medium tyre on, but I lost a medium tyre in FP2 and due to our run plan, and that put me on the back foot," the Brit explained. He went on to add that he "wanted to" use one of the medium sets he still had left but was overruled by the team. "They said that the warm-up was too long or something like that, so then we ran out of time and then ran out of fuel."

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Singapore GP - Brakes fail due to Ferrari miscalculation

A week later in Singapore, Hamilton copped a post-race penalty because he cut numerous corners over the final few laps after his brakes failed. That dropped him below Fernando Alonso in the finishing order and, after the race, it became clear that it was not simply the case that he was unlucky to have had a defective part fitted.

Ferrari's head of track engineering Matteo Togninalli admitted they were "too aggressive" in terms of the lack of brakes management they thought they had to do, because an error in their race simulations had told them that they did not need to be a cautious as it turned out they should have been.

Las Vegas GP - New career low after communication failure

Hamilton would have felt like thousands of losing punters in the casinos surrounding the Strip street circuit when he suffered another unwanted career first. Before November's trip to Sin City, he had never before qualified 20th and dead last for a Grand Prix based on pure pace.

He might have had the chance to set a quicker time that would have prevented that from happening had he not slowed for a red light when crossing the start line, believing he had run out of time. What Ferrari clearly hadn't communicated to him was that he actually crossed the official timing line in time to start another lap. Had he kept his foot down, he would have been fine to complete one more flying lap.

Abu Dhabi GP - Ending on a sour note

With nothing tangible at stake, all Hamilton would have wanted to do was end his season on a relative high with a race clean weekend. His chances went out of the window on Saturday morning when, in the final practice sessions, he lost the rear of his Ferrari and buried the front of it in a barrier, bringing out the red flags.

And qualifying got no better. Once again, it was a Q1 elimination for Hamilton – his fourth in a row to end the year.