Lewis Hamilton’s fairytale debut was not made in Ferrari’s first competitive outing at the F1 Australian Grand Prix.
Hamilton was only eighth in the season-opening race, finishing in 10th with the chaotic and wet Grand Prix in Melbourne.
The seven-time world champion said he felt like he was in the “deep end” all weekend as he endured the disappointing debut of F1’s most iconic team and admitted he was “a lot worse” than he expected.
Although it’s statistically down as the worst F1 debut by a Ferrari driver since Luca Badoer in 2009, Hamilton has had the lowest finish in the opening race of the new season so far.
After overwhelming performances from both the driver and the team, there is a lot to solve about heading to China’s Grand Prix this weekend…
Clearer wireless communication
One obvious area of improvement is Ferrari communication.
After working with Peter “Bonno” Bonnington for 12 years at Mercedes, Hamilton didn’t get down to the smoothest start with new race engineer Riccardo Adami.
Adami and Hamilton sounded like they were riding different wavelengths on the radio at Sunday’s Grand Prix as Hamilton became increasingly irritated by the repeated instructions given.
“Please, please,” was a response from anxious Hamilton after several interactions with Adami, who designed the Carlos Sign during their respective stints at Ferrari.
Lewis Hamilton and new race engineer Ricardo Adami have something to do
However, despite appearing to be frustrated during the race, Hamilton said Adami “doesn’t do a really good job.”
“I think Ricardo did a really good job,” Hamilton said.
“After this, we’ll look into all the comments – what I said and vice versa.
“In general, I am not a person who likes a lot of information in the race.
However, Hamilton pointed out that from a weather standpoint there is a need for more “guidance” from the pit wall.
Temporarily leading, Hamilton fell out of the podium fight when he and Charles Leclair were called to switch to an intermediate player too late. They finished in 10th and 8th place respectively.
Team principal Fred Vasser has admitted that Ferrari has made the “wrong decision” and will review the communications ahead of the second round in Shanghai.
“It was the first time I had to communicate between the pit wall and the car. I could do a better job. It wasn’t a pretty job at all,” Vasseur said.
“We need to learn a lot next weekend and improve our communication. And we’ll learn what Lewis expects from communication. Let’s start learning today and get much better next week.”
Deficit for Charles Leclerc
Hamilton knew he would face a challenge with “Mr. Ferrari” Leclair.
Hamilton was the biggest qualifier in Formula 1 history, earning a record 104 pole position, but a question mark was raised about his performance on a lap after the 40-year-old Briton recently fought with Mercedes teammate George Russell.
Leclerc is considered one of the fastest drivers on the current grid in one lap, with one eligible location and one 0.218 seconds ahead.
After starting a six-six-six-week drift for a weekend of one-six-six-week drift, there were signs of improvement from Hamilton after steadily reducing the deficit when the weekend was on.
Charles Leclerc made Lewis Hamilton better in Melbourne
Overall, Hamilton was pleased with his own qualified effort, even if he was surprised by the a whopping 0.877S gap to McLaren’s claim to Paul in Melbourne.
“Charles has been with this team for seven years. He knows how this car comes and goes. It’s not necessarily a new car, it’s our car and all the tools and all the general features,” Hamilton said after qualifying Saturday.
“I’m still learning them, so being close to it in the first qualifying session, I’ll definitely take it. We’re going to bow our heads and start working to find out why we’re not paced with the front runners.”
Albert Park was one of his best circuits, and the fact that he was drifting in the comfort of his teammates all weekend would have served as a kind of Hamilton wake-up call.
Hamilton hopes to get better in Shanghai, where he holds the most victory record with six.
SF-25 optimization
It was a truly terrifying weekend for Ferrari. Ferrari has had a worst start to the season with just five points hauling since 2009.
Ferrari was turned over by many as McLaren’s closest challenger after a preseason test in Bahrain, so it was a real surprise to see Scuderia struggling with pace throughout the weekend in Melbourne.
Leclerc and Hamilton even overtook Racing Bulls’ Ski Tsunoda and Alex Albon’s Williams, whom Hamilton could not pass in the race, despite the fact that Hamilton seemed to have chosen to set up a wet weather.
The lack of pace in both the qualifying and Grand Prix led to the suggestion that Ferrari faced ride height issues during practice on Friday and had to run a compromised setup for the rest of the weekend.
Vasseur showed that Ferrari didn’t properly optimize the SF-25 Challenger for Albert Park’s tracks, highlighting that there was far more performance from his team.
“Today’s conditions are not representative of performance. They’re more representative from the second quarter starting Friday,” Vasseur said.
“As soon as you overheat your tires you’ll see a big drop. The actual photos of the performance are seen on Friday and Saturday, but even so, McLaren is one step ahead.
“If you don’t adapt your car to tires over the weekend, or you won’t adapt to the temperature of your truck, you’re out of performance range. The next weekend will be something else.”