Lewis Hamilton has revealed that a neck injury sustained early last year affected his debut season with Ferrari.

With a string of podium finishes, including that win in Barcelona, the seven-time world champion is finally making his mark at Maranello, certainly compared to his debut season when his only visit to the podium was his Sprint win in Shanghai.

Other than reliability and strategy, various reasons have been given for the Briton's disappointing debut, which at times gave the appearance of him being on the point of giving up, such was his increasing seeming lack of self-belief.

A fractious relationship with his engineer, combined with a entirely new environment compared to that which he enjoyed at Mercedes, suggested that the Briton and his new team were not gelling, were not understanding or appreciating one another.

However, speaking in Austria, Hamilton has given another possible cause for his less than stellar debut season with Ferrari, an injury he sustained barely weeks after joining his new team.

"I hit the wall very hard last year in testing," he told reporters. "It knocked out one of the discs in my neck, which was into the nerve.

"So, I couldn't do a lot for like nine weeks," he added. "I was having chiropractors every day, physically every day I couldn't sleep. I had painkillers, I had to get an injection, I did everything I could to try to fix it. So that's what I was basically trying to live with. It's not easy in the position that you're sitting in."

Ironically, the incident occurred at Barcelona, scene of the Briton's first win since 2024, and was during a TPC test in late January.