Lewis Hamilton admits that he still has much to learn about how to get the best out of his Ferrari SF-25 after qualifying eighth in Melbourne.
A spin in Q2 hampered Hamilton’s progress, but he will still start the race just behind team mate Charles Leclerc.
Lack of familiarity with the car means he doesn’t know what changes to ask his engineer for in an attempt to optimise it.
“We’ve been just improving every single lap, session-on-session,” he said when I asked him about qualifying.
“Big learning curve this weekend, the car was so much different from the moment I left the pit lane, just feeling so much different than I’ve ever experienced here.
“And it’s been a lot slower process for me to really build confidence in the car. And if you look at the high-speed everywhere, I’ve been down all weekend to Charles, who just had it from the get-go, from just the minute he went out, he knew what the car does.
“And for me, I was just building up to that through the weekend, and I think I got a lot closer towards it in the end. And to be that close to Charles in my first qualifying session in the same car against a great qualifier, I’m pretty happy with that.”
Expanding on where he was struggling he said: “From braking, just through corner balance is a lot different to what I had. Mechanical balance shift that you have is much, much different to what I had in the previous car. And the high speed balance, the low speed balance, is quite a shift. So she behaves a little bit different.”
Hamilton admitted that he couldn’t judge how long it might take him to feel comfortable.
“I really don’t know. Honestly, I thought I was further along than I was, and then I got here and P1, I was like, Jesus, I’ve still got a way to go. There’s still a ton of tools that keep popping out, like hey, what about this? I’ve never tried that. What does it do?
“And it’s one thing saying it, but actually going out and feeling it, so that’s what I’m just really doing, bit by bit. I think we did some good work when trying to move the car forward. But as I said, when you have a problem in the car and you come in normally, when you’ve got the experience, you can say, okay, that’s this is where I want to go with it.
“But I don’t know which tool to use at the moment, so I’m heavily relying, for the first time, on my engineers, and they’ve done a great job. But in the past, I would say, Bono, this is what I want, that setting, this setting, and I can’t do that at the moment. It’s just all mechanical tools. So it’s roll, it’s suspension.”
He now faces the challenge of making his race debut with the team in wet conditions, having not previously sampled the car in the rain.
“I’ve never driven the car in the wet I don’t even know where the wet switch is really, I don’t know which buttons I’ve got to switch for tomorrow. So that’s going to be new.
“We’re using Brembos, for example, which I’ve not used probably since I was much younger. I don’t think I’ve used them for a long time. So how the Brembos behave in the wet, I don’t know if they’re glazed, what settings I’m going to have to use with this car? It’s all different.”
However he acknowledged that wet conditions also bring opportunity: “Oh, definitely, definitely, when you qualify eighth, you kind of hope for it to be wet, but for me, I’m kind of like, I’ve got three laps to learn the car in wet and then get out into the race.”
“The wet has often been something I’ve always enjoyed. Growing up in England, it’s always wet, so it’s been a comfort zone for me. But as I said, I’m going actually, for the first time in the wet, in an uncomfortable position, because I’ve never driven this car, so it’s going to be a shock to the system when I get out there, but I’m going to be learning on the fly and just giving everything.”
Adam Cooper F1 