Baptism of ire: how Hamilton's Ferrari debut could have gone better

“He’ll have a blast,” opined no less an eminence than Nigel Mansell of Lewis Hamilton’s time at Ferrari. That was last week. This is now.

It’s natural the man the tifosi called il leone (‘the lion’) should view his time at the Scuderia through rose-hued optics over 35 years down the line. After all, this is a man who won on his Ferrari debut in 1989.

We’ll draw a discreet veil over the business of Mansell’s car being considered so unlikely to finish the race in question that team manager Cesare Fiorio wanted to short-fuel it, so Nigel could at least put in some fast laps before it conked out. And that victory came at the cost of Mansell lurching off the top step of the podium with blood pouring from his right hand after he cut it on the sharp edges of the trophy.

At that point he probably wished he’d been able to take that early flight home after all.

Likewise, Hamilton’s prospects of having a blast at Ferrari diminished significantly over the course of an increasingly tense weekend in Melbourne. All the optimism that’s been building through the off-season, reaching a tumultuous crescendo during Hamilton’s carefully curated first days in Maranello, fizzled out over the course of three frustrating days on track.

The wet-dry-wet conditions in the race itself provided a final unwelcome dose of reality as the SF-25 proved tricky to drive and the team’s strategy self-destructed.

“I think just for me, it was just confidence,” Hamilton told reporters after the grand prix. “From the moment I got in the car on Friday, I didn’t have the confidence. Particularly in the high speed, I was down a huge amount.

“I got to Saturday, confidence was coming back. I was building and building and building. And then we got to the race, and again, starting from scratch, and I didn't have any confidence through pretty much most of the race – in the settings as well – and the car was very tricky.”

Learning the car in the wet was a challenge for Hamilton, with even the brakes proving unfamiliar

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

What practice, qualifying and the race itself exposed was how far away Hamilton is from being properly settled in at his new team. It’s not just the characteristics of the Ferrari car relative to the Mercedes he drove last year, though he alluded to those – and to other important details, such as the Brembo brake materials with which he has little experience, especially in the wet.

Speaking after qualifying eighth, two tenths off team-mate Charles Leclerc, Hamilton spoke of his unfamiliarity with the “tools” – the various settings and adjustments possible via the steering wheel, and said, “I’m heavily reliant, for the first time, on my engineers.

“They’ve done a great job but, in the past, I would say, ‘Bono [his long-time Mercedes engineer Peter Bonnington], this is what I want. That setting, this setting.’ And I can’t do that at the moment.”

At the time, Hamilton wanted to know the team’s thought process, and believed he’d been misinformed

This kind of personal chemistry takes time to develop, and the circumstances of the race itself provided ample demonstration of how Hamilton and new race engineer Riccardo Adami hadn’t quite meshed in terms of communication.

Early on, Hamilton was chivvying for more detailed information on where he was slow relative to Leclerc, and how he could improve. The tone was civil at first but became increasingly peevish as Adami chivvied in return: during the opening phase of the race while the track was drying, and after the pitstops for slick rubber, Hamilton was bottled up in eighth place behind the Williams of Alex Albon, while Leclerc ran clear in fifth.

Adami wanted Hamilton to try the ‘K1’ button – which triggers an electrical power boost for overtaking purposes – but Lewis was having none of it. After another terse exchange regarding DRS, Hamilton harrumphed, “just leave me to it”.

Timing of the pitstop proved to be another flashpoint on the radio

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

The next flashpoint was the rain that arrived on lap 44, and Ferrari’s response to it – which was to leave both drivers on slick tyres in the hope that the downpour would be limited, both in duration and which parts of the track it affected. Three laps later, during which Leclerc spun, it had to run up the white flag and pit both drivers for intermediates.

“In the last sector, everyone was going off, but I was managing to hold it on,” said Hamilton in Ferrari’s post-race conference.

“So I was just passing people and, once I got past the startline, it was dry – so I was like, ‘this is fine for me, I've just got to hold this out, I've only got a few laps to go’. But then it pelted down just in the last two laps or something, it was coming down, and that's the moment we probably should have come in.”

At the time, Hamilton wanted to know the team’s thought process, and believed he’d been misinformed.

“I thought you said it wasn’t going to rain much,” he complained to Adami. “We just missed a big opportunity there.”

He then asked, “what position am I now in?”

When apprised of the fact that he was now ninth, Hamilton responded with an expletive mild enough to be permissible in a film with a PG certificate, but still with the potential to offend the notoriously sensitive ears of the FIA president. He immediately apologised, thus averting the potential sanction of community service or 30 lashes.

Team boss Frederic Vasseur explained in his post-race briefing that “we made the wrong call” because two of the track’s three sectors were still dry when race leader Lando Norris pitted for intermediates on lap 44, followed by Mercedes’ George Russell. His view was that McLaren had made a knee-jerk reaction to Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri almost having the same accident two corners from the end of the lap.

It was far from a problem-free weekend for Hamilton, even before the race itself

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

“I think that Red Bull and us, we bet on the fact that we have to stay on track and to wait for the last part of the race with slicks,” he said.

But he also acknowledged that some relationship-building needs to take place with Hamilton.

“We will have to learn a lot for next weekend and improve the communication. And learn what Lewis is expecting from the communication. Let’s learn from today and be much better next week” Fred Vasseur

“It was the first time we have to communicate between the pitwall and car [in race conditions]. We can do a better job, it was not a clean one at all,” said Vasseur.

“We will have to learn a lot for next weekend and improve the communication. And learn what Lewis is expecting from the communication. Let’s learn from today and be much better next week.”

Both Hamilton and Ferrari will have to work on this angle – or “blast” will simply become a word Lewis needs to adopt for future radio traffic to avoid an appointment with the stewards…

Both Hamilton and Ferrari know there is much work ahead to ensure his team switch is a success

Photo by: Ferrari