After a difficult debut season with Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton has apparently stabilized this year: How the record world champion’s resurgence can be explained
Ferrari has presented itself as the second strongest force behind Mercedes in the first three races of the new season. Record world champion Lewis Hamilton in particular has made a significant leap in performance compared to last year and even achieved his first podium finish with the Scuderia in China.
How did this come about? “The biggest change is Lewis himself,” says former stand-in driver and Ferrari ambassador Marc Gene in an interview with Sky. “He realizes that he is competitive again for the first time since last year, and that gives him a big boost.”
This development was already evident at the season opener in Australia. “You could already hear on the radio that Lewis is much happier with the car,” says the Spaniard. “He asked where he was, for example, and was told that he had the same lap time as Charles. You could hear from his answer how happy he was.”
Last year, Hamilton had to deal with criticism after his bumpy start in Maranello. “When you have difficult years, there are a lot of questions everywhere,” he says. “Ultimately, I saw that certain people who hadn’t had anywhere near the success I had were speaking negatively – as they still do today.”
Season start for Hamilton “a great feeling”
After the tests in Bahrain, Hamilton had already expressed his appreciation of the mood in the team and emphasized that everyone had “come back with an incredibly positive attitude”. At the time, the Briton was confident that he would be able to perform more successfully again this season.
To date, this impression has been confirmed. “It was a great feeling to come back, start the season strongly and show that I still have what it takes to be at the front of the field,” Hamilton summed up positively in an interview with F1.com.
“I will continue to try to do my best and deliver like this.” After narrowly missing out on the podium in Australia in fourth place, the 41-year-old made it onto the podium for the first time since joining Ferrari just one week later.
However, the third race in Japan was the first setback when the Briton fell well behind his team-mate Charles Leclerc. Nevertheless, Ferrari currently remains the biggest threat to the dominant Mercedes drivers, even if the Scuderia still has significant development potential.
Why Lewis Hamilton currently believes in Ferrari
Hamilton is also confident in this direction, however. “In the last few weeks, for example, I’ve written to the head of aerodynamics and asked: ‘Hey, have you seen that yet? Have you seen that on the car? The communication is really excellent,“ explains the Briton.
”Everyone is going full throttle, and it’s incredibly inspiring to see when you work in such a great team and then see in the factory and in the office how everyone works down to the smallest detail and fights for every millisecond,” adds Hamilton.
“Those are the aspects that I love most about this sport and that I would love to show people. That’s what inspires you and when you come back you think, ‘Wow, these guys are really giving it their all’. So I’m excited about the next few months.”
