The first Ferrari Formula 1 car to be raced by Lewis Hamilton will be revealed at a launch event at the team’s factory in Maranello on Feb. 19 next year.
After 12 years at Mercedes, Hamilton’s Ferrari contract will start in January next year and see him paired with Charles Leclerc at the Italian team.
Both Hamilton and Leclerc will attend F1’s 75th anniversary launch event in London on Feb. 18 — where the liveries of all ten teams will be revealed on stage at the O2 Arena — before travelling to Ferrari’s headquarters in Maranello for the launch of the actual car in a separate event on Feb. 19.
Hamilton is set to make his on-track debut with Ferrari before the launch date by making use of a regulation that allows teams to run a car that is at least two years old, known as Testing of Previous Cars (TPC).
However, team principal Fred Vasseur said the exact date of Hamilton’s first outing in red was still to be determined.
“We will have the occasion to do a TPC or Pirelli test day,” Vasseur confirmed. “But it’s closely linked to the weather, and we didn’t take a decision [on the date].”
Ahead of the first race in Australia on March 16, three days of preseason testing are scheduled in Bahrain from Feb. 26 to 28, which Hamilton and Leclerc will split between them.
It means Hamilton will have limited track time before his first race with Ferrari, but Vasseur trusts his driver’s 18 years of F1 experience will mean he gets up to speed quickly.
“It’s always a challenge, starting from the beginning of January until the launch of the season on the 19th or 18th of Feb in London, and we will do the launch the 19th in Maranello,” Vasseur said. “It means that for sure, it’s critical that you have only six weeks [between Hamilton arriving and the first test], it’s not easy.
“But I think he’s also coming with his own experience. He’s not the rookie of the year.
“It means that I’m not worried at all about this. It’s also the continuity of the previous regulations and so that means for us, we have some reference. I’m not worried, but it’s true that it’s a challenge.
“If you imagine that to go to Bahrain [testing] and you have the sandstorm as we had a couple of years ago, it’s tough, but it’s tough for everybody on the grid. We know that we have only three days there. It is what it is.”
Ferrari finished 14 points behind champions McLaren in this year’s constructors’ championship after scoring five race victories — their most in a season since 2018.
Vasseur believes the team is now on the brink of ending its championship drought, which stretches back to its last constructors’ crown in 2008.
“What we have to do to win next year is about details,” Vasseur said. “We made good improvements I think on every single area.
“We are still missing 14 points on the championship. Fourteen points, it’s a lot, and almost nothing. It’s a DNF, it’s a race incident, it’s a strategic decision.
“It means that we are speaking about details on every single pillar, and it’s a good lesson for everybody into the team, because every single mistake, every single decision, will make a huge difference at the end.
“Next year I’m sure the championship will be also tight, and that we can’t let one point run away.”
Since he took charge at Ferrari at the start of the 2023 season, Vassuer has overseen a return to the front of the grid for the Italian team but said his work was far from finished.
“This is a no-end project,” he added. “You have to keep the approach of the continuous improvement, to change, or to try to improve on every single department, day after day.
“And if at one stage you say, OK, this is my team, I think you are dead, because everybody else will improve and everybody else on the grid will try to do a better job tomorrow than today.
“It means that we have to keep this kind of dynamic. It’s true that when you start a project like I started two years ago, with the system in F1 and you start to recruit, you have people joining the team sometimes two years later.
“And this is creating a huge inertia on the project and we are probably … I will have to do smaller adjustments in the future than I did in the past, let’s say, but I don’t want to say that at one stage that okay now we are fine.
“Even if we are winning next year, I think we have to keep in mind the fact that we have to continue to develop, to develop and to improve.”