Mixed emotions are in order for Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, who will start the 2025 F1 Australian GP from the bottom of the top ten in P9
A long process
Overall, the seven times World Champion actually had a good feeling with his SF-25, but he is still getting used to its peculiarities and tweaks. Hamilton went over his day while talking with Sky Sports.
“No, I generally feel good.I had a really good time out there today. Everything’s been a process weekend, my first FP1 with Ferrari, my first practise sessions and first qualifying, and it’s been a lot of work to really adapt to this car.”
Hamilton’s Ferrari adventure has just begun, and thus he still has to completely enter in the Italian Scuderia’s mechanisms, as well as their practices and ways to communicate. It’s the first car the British driver has ever piloted not featuring a Mercedes engine.
“It’s so much different here to what I’ve experienced in the past, but it’s been interesting, I mean I definitely didn’t expect us to be… I didn’t know that we’d be 9 tenths off or 8 tenths off today, but there is a lot to dissect for sure.”
A good first qualifying against his teammate
Hamilton was also pleased to be as close as he turned out to be to his teammate Charles Leclerc, who has much more experience with the Ferrari F1 cars compared to him.
“Yeah definitely. Charles has been in this team for 7 years, he knows his car in and out, not necessarily the new one but in terms of the general characteristics of our cars and all the tools and everything.
“I’m still learning, so to be that close in my first qualifying session, I’ll definitely take it. We’ll just get our heads down and start working trying to find out why we’re not on pace with the front runners.”
While pleased for the outcome of qualifying, the former Mercedes driver is worried about the actual race because of the different weather conditions.
“Tomorrow is going to be a challenge, I’ve never driven in this car in the rain, so I don’t even know the rain setting, so I’ve got to go and study that tonight, and it’ll be a learning experience again tomorrow.”
What does he have to get used to?
Hamilton returned on the matter of his performance and progress in settling down at Ferrari in a the print media area on Saturday in Melbourne for the 2025 F1 Australian GP:
“We’re just improving every single lap, session on session. 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. It’s been a lot slower process for me to really build confidence in the car.“
In turn 6, and the 9-10 sequence, Leclerc has held an advantage over Hamilton.
“If you look at the high speed everywhere, I’ve been down all weekend. Charles just had it from the get go. From the minute he went out, he knew what the car does.
“For me, I was just building up to that through the weekend. I think I got a lot closer towards it to be that close to Charles in my first qualifying session in the car against a great qualifier.”
A good starting point
He also went into further details on the things which are troubling him at the moment.
“From braking, through corner balance, it’s a lot different to what I had. The mechanical balance shift that you have is much, much different to what I had in the previous car.
“The high speed balance, the low speed balance is quite a shift. She behaves a little bit differently.”
It has been a true lifestyle change for Hamilton, which admitted testing had left him a bit too overconfident:
“Honestly, I thought I was further along than I was and then I got here. FP1, I was like, ‘jeez, I’ve still got a way to go’. There’s still a tonne of tools that are popping out like, ‘hey, what about this? I’ve never tried that. What does it do?’ “
“It’s one thing saying it, but actually going out and feeling it. I think we did some good work with trying to move the car forward.
“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, ‘this is where I want to go with it, but I don’t know which tool to use at the moment.’
It is a completely new perspective for the seven times World Champion, who has to heavily rely on the support of his team compared to his previous experience at Mercedes.
“I’m heavily reliant for the first time on my engineers. They’ve done a great job, but in the past I would say, ‘this is what I want, that setting, this setting,’ and I can’t do that anymore.”
