Lewis Hamilton Raced the First Weeks of 2025 With a Slipped Disc After a January Testing Crash at Barcelona

What happened in January 2025

On January 29, 2025, Lewis Hamilton was two days into a private three-day Testing of Previous Cars session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya when he crashed hard into the wall at the high-speed final section of the lap. He was driving Ferrari's 2023 chassis, the SF-23, as part of his transition from Mercedes.

According to PlanetF1.com, the crash caused enough damage to the car that Ferrari's test programme was delayed for repairs. At the time, the incident was reported publicly, but what the crash actually did to Hamilton's body was not disclosed.

The injury itself

"I hit the wall very hard last year in testing," Hamilton told media at the Red Bull Ring this week, including Crash.net. "Knocked out one of the discs in my neck, which protruded into the nerve. Couldn't do a lot for nine weeks. I was just having chiropractors every day, physio every day. I couldn't sleep. I was on painkillers, had to get injections. I did everything I could to try to fix it."

A herniated cervical disc pressing on a nerve is a serious injury for anyone. For an F1 driver, whose neck muscles are specifically trained to handle the lateral G-forces generated through high-speed corners, the problem is compounded by the cockpit seat position, which places the neck under constant load even at rest.

He raced anyway

If Hamilton's nine-week timeline is accurate, as PlanetF1.com notes, the injury would have been at its worst during the Australian and Chinese Grand Prix weekends in early 2025. His debut race with Ferrari in Australia ended in 10th place in a rain-affected event. PlanetF1.com reports that the Australian weekend is believed to have alerted Ferrari to a fundamental setup problem with the car, though it is now unclear how much of Hamilton's pace deficit that weekend reflected physical limitation rather than purely mechanical issues.

He qualified two-tenths of a second behind teammate Charles Leclerc in Australia and went on to finish the 2025 season sixth in the standings, 86 points behind Leclerc, according to Motorsport.com. It was the worst season of his 19-year F1 career and the first podium-less campaign of his life.

The fair counterargument

Before drawing a straight line from the injury to the season's results, the strongest counterpoint deserves acknowledgment: 2025 Ferrari was widely regarded as a difficult car that underperformed relative to the team's expectations, and Leclerc also had a mediocre year by his own standards. The injury may explain part of Hamilton's slow start, but attributing a full-season deficit of 86 championship points to a nine-week physical recovery alone is unsupported by the available evidence. Hamilton himself has credited recent performance improvements to finally driving a car built with his input, to personnel changes around him, and to tighter collaboration under team principal Frédéric Vasseur.

Where things stand in 2026

Hamilton won the Spanish Grand Prix earlier this month for his 106th career victory and his first with Ferrari, according to Motorsport.com. It snapped a two-year winless streak. He is currently 41 points behind 2026 championship leader Kimi Antonelli, with George Russell, who has publicly called Hamilton "a big threat," nine points behind Hamilton in third.

Despite the math, Hamilton told Crash.net and other media outlets at the Red Bull Ring that he is NOT thinking about the championship. "I'm thinking about each race, arriving and executing the way we did last weekend," he said. "I'm thinking about tomorrow. I'm thinking one day at a time."

He finished fifth in both Friday practice sessions at Austria's Red Bull Ring, ahead of Leclerc in each, according to Fox News. The Austrian Grand Prix weekend is ongoing as of June 27, 2026.

The unresolved question

Hamilton disclosed the injury's severity 17 months after it happened, and only after winning in Spain prompted him to acknowledge he had "carried it for months." He called it "private" before describing it in detail at the Red Bull Ring. What remains unclear is whether Ferrari's medical staff or the FIA's mandatory pre-race fitness declarations were fully informed of the injury's scope at the time, and whether that changes anything about how the 2025 season should be assessed. Neither Ferrari nor the FIA has addressed that question publicly.