Tag Archives: Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton’s radio communications with Ferrari engineer Riccardo Adami have been a regular talking point this year, and there was another example in Austria last weekend.

Told to pit Hamilton argued that his tyres felt good and that he wanted to stay out longer. However, despite his initial protests he followed the instruction and came in.

Questioned about that chat after the race he downplayed the incident, and said that the team knew the bigger picture better than he did.

However on Thursday at Silverstone he gave a more detailed insight, and in essence made it clear that he wants to try more ambitious strategies – and if possible do something different relative to his team mate Charles Leclerc.

“Even just probably an hour ago I brought it up,” he said. “I mentioned it after the race, and then we’ve had time to reflect on it.

“And I think the team’s first view was they just wanted to make sure they secured third and fourth, which is totally fine.

“But I said, look, I’m not here to start fourth and finish fourth. I’m racing for every little bit that we can gain. And in a scenario like that, for example, both of us were on the same strategy – they had us exactly on the same strategy.

“I think we both went medium/hard/medium. I said I would have done medium/medium/hard, so at least I was offset at the end. I’d never want to do the same thing as my team mate, ever.

“And in that last stint, for example, we were not under pressure from the cars behind.

“So they said, yeah, but you would have got overtaken by Charles towards the end. I said well, there could have been a safety car. And in that point there was no risk in taking the gamble.

“And I said, I don’t want to get to a point where I’m ignoring you. So what we’re doing is working on our communication. And we’re still getting to know each other, how we like to operate, and that’s understood.”

Hamilton also gave further insight into how he’s trying to steer the 2026 car in a direction that suits him, with the help of new Ferrari technical director and former Mercedes colleague Loic Serra.

As noted here earlier this week Hamilton says that Leclerc prefers an oversteering car, and he hasn’t been able to drive with his team mate’s set-up. However in Austria he (somewhat reluctantly) moved closer to it, and made it work.

“This year with this car we have lots of different tools and things, the ways in which we can set the car up,” he said.

“Obviously, Charles has been here for a long time, and he’s been a part of evolving, developing this car. He’s very accustomed to it, and they’ve found, and he’s found, one way in which the car works.

“And I’ve tried all the other directions that should work, but they just don’t, for whatever reasons. And I’ve slowly migrated to the place where Charles does run the car, and last week was the closest, and our pace was the closest it has ever been. So it is still tough.

“It’s a tough balance to drive, and it’s not a comfortable one. It’s not one that I want to have in future.

“So I’m working with Loic and with all the guys at the factory to make sure that the next car will have naturally, some of my DNA in it, and hopefully we’ll be able to get some of the characteristics that I’m hoping to have in it for next year.”

We’ll know in late January how well that works out. In the mean time Hamilton is back at the track where he has enjoyed so much success, and where in 2024 he scored an emotional win – his only success in his last three seasons with Mercedes.

When I asked if he was hoping that help from the weather and a little Silverstone magic might propel him to the podium he agreed that was the case.

“I’m hoping and praying, yes,” he said. “There’s always magic here in Silverstone. So don’t really have to hope for that in the sense of the crowd is incredible. It’s a very, very, very special place, and it always provides a special race, one way or the other.

“But I’m hoping that the weather, all sorts of things can help us, because we’re obviously naturally not as quick as McLaren. If it just stays dry, then they will just walk the race.”

On the plus side the new floor introduced in Austria seemed to be effective.

“I think we did take a step, and I’m really hopeful that that continues. I think we still need to try and extract more from this car.

“There are still a few teething problems that we’re trying to work through, some short term and some long term. So we’re trying to make the best with what we have.”

For Lewis Hamilton the Canadian GP was very much a case of Groundhog Day, and not just because his race was spoiled by hitting one of the unfortunate animals and damaging his floor.

It was also yet another case of arriving at a track where he’s had a lot of success only to find that the unchanged Ferrari SF-25 behaves in a completely different manner to what he’s been used to at Mercedes. It’s a scenario that has been repeated at every venue this year.

As always it was a case of trying to improve session-by-session and find a way to get the best out of the car that he has.

The end result was a sixth place, and he was at least happier than in Spain a fortnight earlier, when he described it as his worst race ever.

He wasn’t too happy on Friday in Montreal, but P5 in qualifying was a decent outcome.

“We’ve progressed coming into today,” he said on Saturday afternoon. “So that is a positive. More often not we go through P1 and then P2, often at the previous races P2 has not been so great, because there’s been something wrong with the car, like the floor is not working, or the rear wing is not working.

“There’s always been something that meant that we’re down on downforce or something.

“And so then you have a bad P2 and you’re kind of recovering in P3. But we had a good, solid base yesterday, and then today, we made progress. We didn’t change a huge amount, and the car felt solid. We moved forwards, which is I think a first this season. So I’m grateful to get through to Q3.”

When I asked in what areas he’d made progress he said: “I think probably today most progress came from my driving, adapting driving style. So just made a few changes of how I drove.

“This car drives so much different to what I had before. You go into low-speed corners and you’re waiting and waiting; it doesn’t want to turn.”

He underlined his point with a vivid demonstration of crossed arms – the racing driver sign language for terminal understeer.

In Sunday’s race Hamilton initially sat in P5 behind Oscar Piastri, but as early as lap 12 he lost a chunk of downforce after his collision with the unfortunate groundhog.

Thereafter he lost out to team mate Charles Leclerc and to Lando Norris, before the latter’s crash promoted him back to P6.

“Until the damage, I was kind of holding on to Piastri,” he said. “With the damage, then I started to drop off from Piastri, and then we probably should have stopped around a similar sort of time, but we for some reason stayed out and then I lost a ton of time, came out behind a bunch of people, got stuck behind people, just sitting there in no-man’s land.

“But to still come away with a sixth it’s a positive. I think if everything was perfect, if we had done everything right and we didn’t have any problems, maybe we would have fourth.”

As noted he was in a much better place than he was after Spain, despite the relatively modest result. He could at least see signs of progress.

“I think mostly just me adapting,” he noted. “But I think this track really highlighted the weaknesses of the car, and I’ve never had a car understeer so much at low-speed here, just doesn’t want to turn through Turn 2 and Turn 10. So definitely not my most favourite weekend, but the next one will be better.”

He added: “Just incremental steps. We’ve not had any upgrades or anything like that. So it’s the same car for quite some time now, and so with the same package each weekend, I’m just challenging the guys. I’m constantly battling the engineers, asking questions.

“They set things up and this is how we always do it. And I’m like, Well, what about this? And so we work on trying things, and bit by bit, we are making progress. We’ve improved in our qualifying from Monaco onwards, which is positive.

“But ultimately, we need upgrades. We need an upgrade to be able to fight the guys up front.”

Hamilton and Leclerc have both mentioned upgrades on a consistent basis. Hitherto Fred Vasseur has been coy on commenting to the media. But after Montreal when I pushed him on the subject the Frenchman finally confirmed that something is coming “before UK,” with more to follow.

A performance boost before his home race would be welcome for Hamilton.

“It’s my first half of the year in a new team,” he said when I asked about the obvious frustration of having to wait. “It’s interesting to see different how different teams work and operate.

“There’s been times in my career where you’ve had a whole bunch of upgrades very, very early on in the season, and then you plough ahead very early, and then you stop and taper off. And then sometimes it’s been slower.

“It’s also in the last year of this generation of cars, it’s harder to find performance. And also, you’ve got to be focused on the next year. With this car, hopefully we can still fight for a second in the constructors’. That would be great, yeah, but I want a car that can win next year, so that’s priority.”

Hamilton has faced a lot of criticism this year given his struggles, but he insists that it’s all about the bigger picture.

“What all you guys don’t see is what’s happening in the background, and there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot that needs improving. A lot of things need to be changed. For me, I know we’re not fighting for a win this year. I know we’re not in the championship, which is not a great feeling.

“And also I know I’m in a period of getting accustomed to working with the team. foundation building and trying to steer them to make those changes so that next year we can have a car that can win, and we can then fight and be consistent and do have strategy and all those different things. So with that in mind, I’m okay, but obviously I want to win.

“And so when you’re not competing at the front, you’re not fighting for podiums, I’m definitely a little bit gutted with that. I was hoping today I’d have a fight for a podium, but we don’t have the performance currently, so hopefully, with an upgrade, maybe at some stage, we’ll be a bit sharper.”

After qualifying in Bahrain Lewis Hamilton was clearly downbeat on Saturday evening, and he appeared to be a loss to explain why he was only ninth on the grid and 0.597s shy of team mate Charles Leclerc.

His struggles to adjust to a very different car at Ferrari have been well documented, but on this occasion there seemed to be an extra level of frustration.

Inevitably there was some soul-searching that evening, and to his credit he bounced back in the race, pulling off some good moves.

At times he wasn’t happy with his tyres, and having mediums for the opening stint when those around him were on softs didn’t help, but he was far from the only driver to complain.

However what caught the eye was a very strong middle stint on his second set of medium tyres, when he really seemed to get into the groove and even held fastest lap for a while. A gain of four places and fifth place at the flag was a decent result.

“A much more positive day,” he said when I asked him about his race. “The middle stint I felt really aligned with the car. The balance finally was in a spot, and my driving style seemed to be working in that moment. And so I learned a lot from today, and this weekend actually. A lot, probably more than all the other weekends.”

The challenge now will be to get the car into that same user-friendly window on a more regular basis.

“The key is to try and get back to it every weekend,” he agreed. “It’s clear that the car really does require a different driving style, and I think I’m slowly adjusting to that. And also set-up.

“I’ve been bit all over the place, a long way from Charles the past two weekends, and then slowly migrating towards him. So I think if I start the weekend in a more convenient spot and apply the techniques that I learned this weekend, hopefully I can improve from there.”

Hamilton is known for his late nights at the track working with the engineers, and typically he’s the last driver to leave the paddock on a Saturday. On this occasion the homework was of a more personal nature.

“I just went to my hotel to sort it out, had the discussion with myself,” he said when I asked about how tough that evening was.

“And I had a really good start today, and I knew that the next day would be a new day. So I just started or tried to start more positive as I said.

“Obviously qualifying isn’t good enough. But I think if I get the car where it was, for example, in that middle stint, and I start delivering qualifying, you could see I can still race. So if I fix that, then there should be better weekends.”

It’s easy to be sceptical when drivers talk about the difficulty in transitioning from one car to another, and Hamilton isn’t the only one with issues, as the likes of Carlos Sainz, Nico Hulkenberg and Esteban Ocon are still adjusting.

It’s actually harder for more experienced drivers who have set ways of doing things than for rookies coming out of F2. In the case of Lewis his 12-year stint at Mercedes created muscle memory that is not easy to undo.

“It just feels so alien, it really does feel so alien,” he noted. “I think we all get stuck in our ways, and I’ve been very stuck, ‘I need to keep driving the way I’m driving to make the car come to me.’ But it’s not working.

“So I am adjusting myself now to the car, and also with the tools, it drives so much different with all the ECU, the controls that we have, you have to use them a lot different to the past.”

He added: “Just one example is I never used engine braking before, for the past 12 years. We never use engine braking. Well, here we use a lot of engine braking to turn the car. They’re much different brakes.

“Brakes are so much different to what I had in the past. Like in the last stint, I had to use the rears to turn the car, and then other times you have to put all the weight on the front. It’s probably a bigger balance window than I’m used to.

“It’s a much different car, but even worse qualifying this year than I had last year. So I just keep trying. I’ll get there eventually.”

Hamilton still sees plenty of positives in the bigger picture.

“Mercedes is an amazing team, as you know, but the energy in this team is fantastic,” he said. “And the guys are pushing really hard the pitstops fantastic today. They’ve trained so hard to get the pit stops that they’re doing. And I’m adjusting to their pit stops as well.

“And I think we’ve had really fast pit stops, particularly today as well. And strategy, we’re slowly getting on top of things.

“I think today it will be interesting to see what they say afterwards, with whether we would have used a different tyre at any point in the race. But the middle stint was great, and we’ve got some improvements to make to the car. But I’m sure we can do it.”

Fives races in six weekends is a tough schedule for everyone. Drivers are at least getting a lot of mileage, but they’ve had limited opportunity to catch their breath and properly debrief back at base with their engineers. Hamilton has an intriguing take on the upsides of travel.

“It’s been really nice to be at these races, to be honest,” he said. “Because it means less photo shoots and all that kind of stuff. The start of the year was brutal, more shoots and more things I’ve ever had before. So it’s been nice to into this long trip, and get back to what I love doing most…”

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