It’s not been easy few first months at Ferrari for Lewis Hamilton, and finishing qualifying at his first home race for the team in Imola in only 12th place was not what he envisaged when he signed up.
However on Sunday he turned it around with a superb performance, starting on the hard tyres and taking advantage of good strategy calls to climb up to fourth.
With the safety car having bunched up the field in the closing laps he even had an eye on the third placed McLaren of Oscar Piastri up ahead, but despite being on older tyres the Aussie remained out of reach.
The China sprint win was an obvious high for Hamilton in the first part of the season, and there have been odd stints elsewhere when he felt at one with the car, but it hasn’t happened very often.
On race day at Imola things came together for him, and now it will be intriguing to see if it really is a turning point as he continues to build up his knowledge of the car and the team.
“China was pretty great, but I would say this one was better,” he said. “I’ve always loved when you’re fighting from further back and coming through, that’s how I started off as a kid, around Rye House.
“It’s such a better feeling than starting first and finishing first, but definitely an absolutely mega race, and so many positives to take.
“There are tons of positives to take from today. One is the strategy was really fantastic today, they made great calls, didn’t put a foot wrong there.
“China, I felt really aligned with the car. And then the only other time is this today, like I felt that real synergy. And I think the setup was great. I think we made a bit of an improvement in our performance for the race.
“We’ve just got to unlock the potential in qualifying. Now, if we had qualified better, we would have been fighting for a podium, which is something we didn’t think would be possible.”
Could he really have challenged Piastri?
“I think I needed probably another five laps, something like that, to have really got close enough to really challenge. That McLaren’s still damn fast on old tyres!”
Nevertheless he raced plenty of other people, and made a few passes, including jumping team mate Charles Leclerc when he got tangled up with Alex Albon.
It was very different to Shanghai, where he started at the front and held on to win.
“Just the whole thing was entertaining,” he said. “Obviously, at the beginning, it wasn’t spectacular. I got a decent start. Kind of got squeezed and then lost ground to a Mercedes [Kimi Antonelli] that had the hard tyres. And then I was just sitting there waiting.
“Definitely had to be patient, just breathe. And then bit by bit, strategy started to plan out, and the car really came alive when I got into the medium tyres. And a great call at the end to switch.”
Imola was of course Hamilton’s first proper encounter with the tifosi since he switched teams, and it was clear that he enjoyed it.
At the end of Sunday’s driver parade lap both he and team mate Charles Leclerc stepped off the flatbed truck at the start of the pit straight to greet the crowd.
Lewis got a great reception, and after the flag he dedicated his feisty race – albeit to a humble fourth in the grand scheme of things – to the fans.
“It’s been incredible,” he said when I asked him about the love he’d received. “What an amazing experience. Already just on the drivers’ parade lap, all the drivers were all doing their normal talking, but I really wanted to see what… I even took a picture where there’s a memorial of Ayrton, I was just taking pictures, film, of the crowd, and just a sea of red everywhere.
“And it was just really reminiscent of when I was growing up, watching sitting at home on my couch having a bacon sarnie, watching Michael Schumacher here racing with Ferrari, and seeing the connection he had with the crowd.
“It’s quite an incredible experience to think that I’m now here in one of the two Ferraris having that connection with such a large, passionate group of people. It’s unbelievable.”
At Silverstone he always finds a little extra, so was it a similar feeling?
“Yeah, it’s definitely like that. I mean, the love that the Italian fans have. Silverstone, it’s a connection more so with me, being a Brit, which is super special, and I love it.
“This one’s like, good to see how passionate you get for Ferrari, I guess it doesn’t matter who’s in it. They just love to see the red car. It’s like the red car comes and they get so excited! It’s amazing to see. It’s really cool.”
Attention now turns to Monaco, where Hamilton has had some great days in the past, and where Ferrari has been quick in recent times.
Lewis doesn’t know what to expect, but the car’s inherent weakness in qualifying won’t help.
“Just every race I go to is the first time with this car,” he said. “So I really have no idea what Ferrari feels like.
“The races that are coming up, particularly Monaco, a track where they’ve generally been strong in the past, I hope we can take some of the learnings from this weekend in the car and apply it. I’m really hopeful we can.
“It will still be a question about getting the tyres working on a single lap. If we can figure that out next week, then I think we could be in a good position.”
Despite his strong recent record Leclerc is not optimistic, especially given the aforementioned qualifying weakness.
“I’m not sure either to be honest,” said Hamilton. “We’ve been struggling, particularly on a single lap. So I don’t know how that’s going to go. I’ve got some ideas of that I’m going to try and apply next week that people have been a little bit reluctant to do it, I think because we’ve had lots of other things to focus on.
“But I’m hoping next week we can find something to unlock some more performance. I really don’t know how this car’s going to be.
“I think our car is generally not as good in high-speed, okay in medium, and maybe a little bit not as strong as the others in low, and obviously the next race is all low, so we’ll see how we can try and pull some more out of it next week.”
Adam Cooper F1 