Rumours that Lewis Hamilton could reunite with former trainer Angela Cullen at Ferrari have gone into overdrive after an eye-catching social media post.
Hamilton is preparing for his first season as a Ferrari driver, having announced almost a year ago his decision to join the Italian team from Mercedes on a multi-year contract from F1 2025.
Lewis Hamilton and Angela Cullen to reunite at Ferrari in F1 2025?
It marks only the second team switch of Hamilton’s illustrious career, with his only previous move coming in 2013 when he swapped McLaren for Mercedes.
Hamilton, the most successful driver in F1 history with a joint-record seven World Championships and 105 race victories to his name, is expected to officially start work with Ferrari later this month.
Recent reports have claimed that Hamilton is scheduled to appear in two TPC [Testing of Previous Car] tests for Ferrari in January, with a debut outing at the team’s Fiorano test track in the week commencing January 20 expected to be followed by two days of running in Barcelona.
Hamilton is currently enjoying a short winter break, having celebrated his 40th birthday last Tuesday (January 7).
To mark the occasion, Hamilton posted an image himself standing atop a mountain during a skiing holiday using Instagram’s story function, which allows photographs and video clips to be published for a 24-hour timespan.
In the accompanying caption, Hamilton wrote: “Another one around the sun. Thanks for all the birthday love. Hard at work already. Talk soon.”
On the same day, Cullen also posted an image of herself on the slopes with a small red flag displaying Hamilton’s F1 race number, 44, in the background.
It is unclear whether the pair were together or on separate skiing holidays or whether their social media activity was intentionally synchronised.
Cullen served as a key member of Hamilton’s inner circle for much of his Mercedes career, becoming the driver’s physiotherapist and assistant in 2016 before the pair parted ways at the start of 2023.
Hamilton enjoyed his peak years with the 50-year-old New Zealander by his side, storming to four consecutive titles between 2017 and 2020, the year he equalled Michael Schumacher’s long-standing record of seven World Championships.
He became the first man to surpass 100 grand prix victories and pole positions in 2021, with Cullen’s exit coming a short time after the first of two consecutive winless seasons for Hamilton in 2022.
Speaking after Cullen’s departure in early 2023, Hamilton paid tribute to her effect on his career.
He said: “People for sure won’t understand it, naturally, because they see it from a distance, but she has been one of the greatest things that’s happened to me in my life.
“I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of people and she’s the single hardest-working woman that I get to be around.
“She’s focused, selfless and she makes my weekends peaceful.
“Every day I wake up, whatever time it is, she’s just positive – never a single day has she been negative, so that’s very, very important.
“I think it’s important in life to put positive people around you.
“You can’t be going around with deadweights, you can’t be going around with people who don’t inspire you to be better and lift you up when you’re down.
“You need to be around people who can do that for you and she’s one of them.”
Reports earlier this month claimed that Hamilton is set to be joined at Ferrari by a huge personal entourage including manager Marc Hynes, a former racing driver who rejoined his inner circle last year.
Hamilton will also be accompanied at Ferrari by an array of photographers, trainers, security staff and “at least one” communications and public relations chief to deal with non-F1 matters.
With PlanetF1.com revealing last year that Peter Bonnington would not be following him from Mercedes to Ferrari, Riccardo Adami is expected to become Hamilton’s new race engineer at Ferrari.
Adami previously worked with Hamilton’s predecessor Sainz and four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel, with claims last year that Hamilton had already approached Vettel to gain an initial impression of his new race engineer.
Bonnington, meanwhile, has been promoted to head of race engineering at Mercedes, but is expected to remain as race engineer to Hamilton’s successor, the teenage sensation Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
Despite his new surroundings, Hamilton is set to be welcomed by a range of familiar faces at Ferrari with the driver known to have a pre-existing relationship with several senior figures.
Fred Vasseur, the Ferrari team principal, previously oversaw Hamilton’s title-winning GP2 season as boss of the ART Grand Prix team in 2006, which resulted in the British driver being rewarded with an F1 seat with McLaren for 2007.
Hamilton is also known to have a close relationship with Ferrari president John Elkann, revealing in 2023 that the pair have remained in touch since meeting at a Google event in Sicily some years ago.
Loïc Serra worked with Hamilton throughout his years of success at Mercedes before joining Ferrari as chassis technical director last October.
The French engineer is leading the development of Ferrari’s F1 2025 car, codenamed Project 677, which will be officially launched on February 19.
Jerome d’Ambrosio started work at Ferrari on the same day as Serra, having been appointed to the role of deputy team principal as well as the head of the team’s junior academy.
The former Marussia and Lotus-Renault driver had a short spell at Mercedes in 2023/24, briefly filling in for Toto Wolff as the team boss recovered from knee surgery in late 2023.