Can Hamilton End Ferrari’s Drought?
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Seven-time World Driver Champion Lewis Hamilton announced his move from Mercedes to Ferrari for the 2025 season. With that, Hamilton has a unique opportunity to both break the tie with Michael Schumacher for the most titles and end Ferrari’s 15 year title drought. What is the probability for Hamilton and Ferrari to achieve success together?
In this analysis, I’ll use historical race data dating back to 2010 to build predictive models for each of the upcoming 24 races in 2024. I’ll then predict race results for each of the 2024, 2025, 2026, and 2027 seasons, simulating each season 10,000 times, to find out the chance that Hamilton and Ferrari capture a title. My analysis focuses on the top four teams from 2023—Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari, and McLaren.
My final model for each race is a linear weight of team points won in the four previous races at that circuit. The model weights for the most recent (n-1) race ranged from 0.35 to 0.65; the weights for the n-2 race ranged from 0.15 to 0.3; the weights for the n-3 race ranged from 0.1 to 0.2; and the weights for the n-4 race ranged from 0 to 0.15.
I applied two constraints when constructing the models:
The linear weight assigned to a more distant year can never be higher than the linear weight of a more recent year for any race.
The sum of the linear weights can never be more than 1. (The sum can, however, be less than 1, which is a mean reversion characteristic signaling that other teams are likely to gain ground on the top four constructors)
Five races did not have enough historical data to build strong models for. For those races I used the circuit-average weightings as a proxy.
Here is the circuit-average formula: 0.5*(n-1 points) + 0.2*(n-2 points) + 0.15*(n-3 points) + 0.05*(n-4 points)
2024 Projections
In Figure 1, we can see that Red Bull is projected to win every race in 2024 outright except for Mexico, where it is projected to tie with Mercedes; Singapore, where it is projected to lose to Ferrari; and China, where it is projected to lose to Mercedes.
Figure 1: Projected points for each of the 24 races in 2024 for the top four constructors.
As seen in Figure 2 below, Red Bull’s 16th percentile points projection is close to the median projections of its closest two competitors, Mercedes and Ferrari. The 84th percentile projections for both Ferrari and Mercedes are close to Red Bull’s median projection.
Red Bull’s chance of winning the constructor title again in 2024 is 65.1%, followed by Mercedes at 19.5%, Ferrari at 14.0%, and McLaren at 1.2%.
Interestingly, sports books’ implied betting odds have Red Bull at an 80% chance to repeat, McLaren at a 12.5% chance to win, Mercedes at a 11.1% chance to win, and Ferrari at a 10% chance to win. I see good value in buying Mercedes at those odds and moderate value in buying Ferrari.
Figure 2: Projected point totals for the top four constructors in 2024, along with their 16th (-1 standard deviation) and 84th (+1 standard deviation) percentile projections and their title win %.
2025 Projections
The field is projected to tighten in 2025 with Red Bull still winning all but three races - losing Singapore to Ferrari and losing both China and Australia to Mercedes - but having less margin of victory.
Figure 3: Projected points for each of the 24 races in 2025 for the top four constructors.
Each of Ferrari, Mercedes, and McLaren gains ground on Red Bull in title odds. Perhaps Hamilton’s shift to Ferrari can help them move the needle by more than 0.6%, but since this analysis is constructor focused, I am not yet aiming to quantify Hamilton’s impact as a Ferrari driver.
Figure 4: Projected point totals for the top four constructors in 2025, along with their 16th (-1 standard deviation) and 84th (+1 standard deviation) percentile projections and their title win %.
2026 Projections
In 2026, Red Bull is projected to lose to Ferrari in Singapore and to Mercedes in China. It’s also projected to tie Ferrari in Australia. Red Bull’s margin of victory will continue to tighten, and Ferrari and McLaren are poised to gain ground on them.
Figure 5: Projected points for each of the 24 races in 2026 for the top four constructors.
Figure 6: Projected point totals for the top four constructors in 2026, along with their 16th (-1 standard deviation) and 84th (+1 standard deviation) percentile projections and their title win %.
2027 Projections
The projections stabilize in 2027, with Red Bull maintaining its title win probability. McLaren continues to inch closer to contention but is still well behind the top three teams.
Figure 7: Projected points for each of the 24 races in 2027 for the top four constructors.
Figure 8: Projected point totals for the top four constructors in 2026, along with their 16th (-1 standard deviation) and 84th (+1 standard deviation) percentile projections and their title win %.
Conclusions
Hamilton has a 39.7 % chance to end Ferrari’s title drought within his first three seasons driving for his new team.
From this analysis, it is evident that Red Bull has done an incredible job strategizing for the newer circuits such as Qatar, Las Vegas, Netherlands, Emilia Romagna, and Miami, and is more significantly outperforming its competitors in those than in the older circuits such as Monaco, China, Japan, Australia, and Bahrain.
