Lewis Hamilton reacts to major F1 2025 calendar news with first Ferrari race venue confirmed

Lewis Hamilton on a red carpet.

Lewis Hamilton is looking forward to the Australian Grand Prix being the season opener again in 2025, believing it to be the “best first race” as it returns to its previous Round 1 slot.

The 2025 calendar was announced with a run of five races in six weeks to start the season, but Hamilton’s first race for Ferrari will take place at Albert Park in Melbourne, the scene of many a curtain-raiser in years gone by – and the seven-time World Champion is pleased to see that be the case again next year.

Lewis Hamilton responds to return of ‘best first race’ as F1 2025 season-opener

Hamilton will look to make the best of the remainder of this season with Mercedes before his high-profile move across to Ferrari, having signed for the Scuderia on a multi-year deal to replace Carlos Sainz.

But having had a heads-up of the news of Australia’s return to the top of the Formula 1 calendar for next season, the Briton was happy to hear about Melbourne retaking its long-held place at the beginning of the year from the weekend of 14-16 March.

“I love this track, this race,” Hamilton recently told media in Melbourne.

“I think it was always the best first race of the season, so it’s exciting to hear that this is the first one next year – it just takes me back to when I first started.

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“I love being here. I’ve always enjoyed the trip over, often when you did two flights in one bulk it was pretty intense, but I, over the years, started to break it off with a trip to Malaysia with Petronas.

“So I stopped in Malaysia and went to visit a school there, and they were working on STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths, ed.] subjects there with some kids and [doing] experiments, and then came here.

“Felt great, bit of jetlag, but it’s an amazing city. Beautiful, and the weather’s been great. So going out and running down the canal and the city has been amazing…and the track is just so exciting.

“And we’ve got a much better weekend. The whole paddock setting is probably one of the nicest in most of the calendar, and the track is really challenging, and it’s where we had my first Grand Prix.”

A double-header of the Australian and Chinese Grands Prix will kick off a record-equalling 24-race schedule in 2025, with a triple-header of Japan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia making it five races within the first six weeks of next season.