Vasseur's "amazing" first rodeo with a young Hamilton before F1 2025 reunion

Lewis Hamilton hadn’t even wanted to stay in F3 when he rocked up at Fred Vasseur’s ASM team for 2005. Little did either know they would work together two decades later at Ferrari

Out of a once-successful but now-broken partnership with a storied squad, and into the welcoming, generally jolly arms of Fred Vasseur at the helm of another. Lewis Hamilton has been here before.

Rewind 20 years, and Ferrari’s new Formula 1 superstar was merely a highly rated up-and-comer, with considerable McLaren backing. It was still early days in his single-seater career. Hamilton had won the Formula Renault UK title at the second attempt with Manor Motorsport in 2003. Manor then opted to switch its successful Formula 3 team out of the British championship and into the F3 Euro Series, to which it graduated with its young prodigy.

In this article

Alex Kalinauckas

Formula 1

FIA F2

FIA F3

Lewis Hamilton

Ferrari

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Author Alex Kalinauckas

Alex Kalinauckas is Autosport's Grand Prix Editor, covering every Formula 1 race since the start of 2020. After completing a master's degree in journalism at Goldsmiths College University of London in 2014, he worked for a range of motorsport and technology publications while covering national racing as an Autosport freelancer.

A lifelong motorsport fan - no one in his family can explain quite how or why such a development first occurred - Alex joined the Autosport staff in April 2017 as the magazine’s Assistant Editor covering Formula 2 and GP3, before being made Formula E correspondent and Autosport.com’s Plus Editor in March 2018. He lives in north-east London and is constantly frustrated by the Central Line.