The factors behind Hamilton's rebound in China after difficult Ferrari debut

They say a week is a long time in politics. It’s not that long in motor racing.

Straight after exiting his Ferrari following his sprint-race win in Shanghai, Lewis Hamilton took aim at the “people yapping” about his difficult maiden race for the Scuderia in Melbourne last weekend. They didn’t understand the challenges of adapting to a new team, he said.

Later, in the press conference, he elucidated further about those challenges – and what he’d done to overcome them. Among the obvious issues at the opening round was that Hamilton was still learning the car’s control systems as well as how to drive it.

Over and above that, the increasingly tetchy tone of the radio traffic between Hamilton and engineer Riccardo Adami suggested they were yet to develop the functional chemistry such a partnership requires in the pressure situation of a race. It was easy to infer that there was still a mismatch in terms of working methods between the team and its new driver.

“Last week, for whatever reason, I didn’t feel comfortable in the car,” Hamilton said. “Set-up wasn’t really where I wanted it to be.

“I’ve been sitting back and letting the guys do what they need to do, I need to observe how they like to operate, rather than imposing – because maybe what I’ve done in the past [at Mercedes] won’t work.

“So, coming into this weekend, straight away on Monday [after Melbourne] I hit Riccardo up and said, ‘These are the things I want to start with this weekend, this is more a [set-up] direction I’m happy with.’ That’s something I’d tested in Bahrain and kind of veered off from there.

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari SF-25

Photo by: Ferrari

“There’s been a couple of changes but from yesterday I’ve been more at one with the car.”

It’s clear Hamilton had digested the lessons from Albert Park. During that race, much of his unbroadcast radio traffic concerned the set-up of his car and how it differed from team-mate Charles Leclerc’s – Hamilton was, for instance, running less front wing angle.

It’s a mark of a champion when a driver can absorb that much granular detail even when struggling with the corner-by-corner business of guiding an unfamiliar car around in the wet. But he also knew he had to work on his own mindset, and putting the Ferrari on pole in Shanghai gave him the opportunity to do that.

“It’s quite a view, starting from pole – and quite some time since I’ve had that view,” he said. “So I got in the car extra-early [on the grid] because I wanted to be present and enjoy it, I hadn’t been there for a while.”

On the final day of the Bahrain test, a car problem meant Hamilton was unable to complete a planned race-simulation run. This contributed to his lack of familiarity with the so-called ‘tools’ – the fine adjustments to such minutiae as diff settings, and the operational sequences required to trigger certain functions.

Despite having remodelled his steering wheel pre-season to more closely resemble what he was accustomed to, this is just the front end of the interface between a driver and those control systems. It will take time for this to become second nature.

“Even through this [sprint] race I’m learning,” he said. “I didn’t get to do a race run in Bahrain, so the [Melbourne] race, in the wet, was my first long run in the car.

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

“That [the Shanghai sprint] was actually my first proper long run really of any significance. So I’m learning along the way still, how to manoeuvre the tools in order to make the car work the way I want it to work.

“I’m really happy with how it came out, given that’s the case, and I’ve got a much better knowledge now of what the car likes and what I need to do to make it faster.

“It’s a good stepping-stone to what I’m working towards.”