Lewis Hamilton Details Nine-Week Pain After Ferrari Testing Crash
NXTbets Pro | Published On: June 26, 2026
Hamilton injury
Lewis Hamilton said a crash during Ferrari’s private pre-season testing in Barcelona in January 2025 left him with a neck injury that caused severe pain and slowed the start of his first season with the team. He said the impact was strong enough to knock a disc in his neck into a nerve, and he described a stretch in which he could not do much for about nine weeks. The problem came during his early months at Ferrari, and Hamilton said it changed the way that period felt from the inside. Instead of settling straight into life with a new team, he had to deal with pain, limited movement and the constant strain of trying to keep his season on track. The crash became one of the defining setbacks of his opening Ferrari campaign, because it affected both his body and the rhythm of his early work with the team. He said the physical setback reached into his day-to-day routine and made the first part of the partnership harder than it might have been without the injury.
Ferrari recovery
Hamilton said he kept racing through the recovery and managed the injury with daily physiotherapy or chiropractic treatment, painkillers and an injection. That approach let him stay in the fight even as the pain lingered. He said he had to deal with the issue one day at a time, and the recovery period stretched long enough to shape how he approached the rest of the season. The facts point to a driver who kept moving through discomfort rather than stepping away from the car. That matters because the injury did not sit in isolation. It came at the start of a new chapter with Ferrari, when he was still building his relationship with the team and learning how the package fit around him. Hamilton later said the early months were affected by the setback, which shows how much the crash reached beyond the immediate medical issue. The injury was serious enough to alter his routine, but it did not stop him from pushing on with the year. He kept working through treatment while continuing to race, and that persistence set up the recovery that followed. When the season moved on, Hamilton eventually found a brighter moment in Barcelona again, this time through results rather than pain. He won his first race for Ferrari there on his 31st attempt, and he said improvements to the car and the team environment helped bring that win together. The turnaround gave his first Ferrari season a different reference point, even if the road to get there had already been shaped by the crash.
Hamilton season
Hamilton still finished sixth in the 2025 Formula 1 championship, 86 points behind Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc, and he did not reach the podium that season for the first time in his Formula 1 career. Those numbers show a year that never fully settled into the kind of title challenge he was once known for delivering. The injury made the first part of the campaign tougher, and the final standings showed that the work did not translate into a championship push. Even with the Barcelona win for Ferrari, Hamilton’s season ended with clear gaps in both the standings and the results sheet. He said he is not focused on the title race and wants to concentrate on winning each weekend instead, including the Austrian Grand Prix. That outlook points to a shorter horizon, one race at a time, rather than a chase built around points tables and season-long comparisons. It also fits the way his first Ferrari year unfolded. He spent part of it managing pain, part of it rebuilding his race rhythm and part of it trying to turn improvements in the car and the team environment into results. The story of the season is not just the injury or the later win. It is the combination of both, plus a championship that left him outside the podium positions for the first time in his Formula 1 career.
