Ferrari’s rollout of Lewis Hamilton has hit its first bump in the road.
Lewis Hamilton crashes during Ferrari F1 testing in Spain, per reports
According to multiple reports, Lewis Hamilton crashed during a testing session in Spain
Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images
Mark Schofield is a former college quarterback and attorney covering the NFL and F1.
According to multiple reports Hamilton crashed during testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, home of the Spanish Grand Prix and site of three days of pre-season testing for Ferrari ahead of the 2025 campaign. While both Charles Leclerc and Hamilton put in a solid first day of work on Tuesday, according to reports from Italian media Hamilton crashed in the final sector of the circuit and hit the barriers.
That sector was reconfigured ahead of the 2023 season, removing a chicane that was in place to slow drivers down ahead of the long straight from the final turn, through the start/finish line, and down into Turn 1.
Reporting from Italian media indicates that the driver was unharmed in the incident, but that his car received “serious” damage. Hamilton was driving the SF-23, the team’s challenger for the 2023 F1 season, under the sport’s Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) regulations.
This is not the first time the seven-time champion has crashed during pre-season testing with a new team. Hamilton’s first testing session with Mercedes ahead of the 2013 season ended after just 15 laps, when a brake failure on the W04 saw Hamilton’s car slide through the gravel and into the tire wall.
After the incident, Hamilton shrugged the crash off as “what testing is all about.”
“I’m just glad that firstly I’m safe and that it’s happened now, not when we’re in the season or something,” said Hamilton at the time.
“This is what testing is about. It’s about getting through those development phases, errors or whatever they may be and working on them and that’s what the guys are doing.”
The same applies to today’s reported incident in Barcelona. This is what pre-season testing is all about. In a way, this is similar to reports of quarterbacks throwing countless interceptions during training camp. This is the time to learn what you can, and cannot, get away with before the games — or laps — count for real.
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