Ferrari have fired up the new SF-25 car for the first time ahead of Lewis Hamilton’s first season with the team in F1 2025.
Hamilton is gearing up for his first season as a Ferrari driver, having joined the Italian team from Mercedes over the winter.
Ferrari SF-25 fired up for first time ahead of Lewis Hamilton debut
The seven-time World Champion, who has signed a multi-year contract with Ferrari, has spent recent weeks integrating himself with his new employers.
After his first official visit to the team’s Maranello factory last month, Hamilton began an extensive period of private testing as preparations for the F1 2025 campaign stepped up.
The 40-year-old enjoyed his first taste of a Ferrari F1 car at the team’s Fiorano test track before the Scuderia’s pre-season preparations moved to Barcelona, the home of F1’s Spanish Grand Prix.
Hamilton crashed the team’s 2023 car on the second day of running at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with the extent of the damage and the length repairs preventing team-mate Charles Leclerc taking to the track that afternoon.
The Ferrari drivers were back on track in Spain this week in a Pirelli tyre test to assist the manufacturer’s development of the new tyres for F1 2026.
Hamilton’s next on-track outing is expected to come on February 19, the day the new SF-25 car – previously known under the codename Project 677 – officially launched by Ferrari.
Hamilton and Leclerc will drive in a brief shakedown test at Fiorano after the formal presentation of the SF-25, getting an initial feel of the new car ahead of the three-day pre-season test in Bahrain across February 26-28.
And Ferrari have reached a key stage in the development of the SF-25, with the team posting a clip to social media of the car’s first fire up at Maranello.
The landmark moment was witnessed by a number of key Ferrari figures including deputy team principal Jerome d’Ambrosio, chief executive Benedetto Vigna and Piero Ferrari, the only living son of legendary team founder Enzo Ferrari.
The first fire up of the SF-25 sees Ferrari follow in the footsteps of McLaren and Williams, who have also posted fire-up videos of their F1 2025 cars over recent weeks.
Hamilton’s first season with Ferrari will see him use a non-Mercedes engine for the first time in F1, having been powered by the German manufacturer throughout his career stretching back to his debut season in 2007.
Eddie Jordan, the former F1 team owner, was a critic of Ferrari’s decision to sign Hamilton last year, claiming that president John Elkann “must have rocks in his head” to have replaced Carlos Sainz.
Appearing on the Formula For Success podcast earlier this week, however, Jordan admitted that Hamilton’s impressive start to life at Ferrari has changed his opinion.
He said: “What I thought was unbelievably eye-catching, that photograph of Lewis Hamilton in that coat.
“It just depicts why I think Ferrari went for him. He’s box office, absolutely.
“I think you will find there’s close to six million likes [on Instagram] about the way he looked and his appearance.
“It’s a very stylish photograph. And it’ll be iconic. That photograph will be used for many, many, many, many years to come.
“It depends, of course, how he gets on, but at the same time, I think the photograph will be used.
“We heard recently about the crash [in Barcelona], which is unfortunate.
“I also saw the photographs of the many, many, many thousands of the tifosi that turned up to take photographs, wish him well, just on a little reconnaissance trip with the car, so you can imagine what it’s going to be like on grand prix day.
“I think he will be a huge draw. I think he’s not just box office for Formula 1, I think he’s box office everywhere, particularly in the Americas, in Asia, we know about Europe.
“I’m totally warm to the idea that Ferrari, for all sorts of reasons, particularly commercial, made the right decision.”
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