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Lewis Hamilton, approaching 40 years-old, having just had a team-mate comprehensively out-perform him for the first time in his career, is switching to the highest-profile team of all where his 27-year-old team-mate has a reputation as the fastest man on the grid over one lap. Doesn’t sound like an easy challenge, does it?
Put aside for a moment how Hamilton has overcome challenges throughout his career, the ‘Still I Rise’ mentality which he maintains as a way of rallying his energies in adversity. Let’s confine it to what exactly he has struggled with in his final season at Mercedes in '24 and what that implies about his Ferrari prospects into '25.
Looking only at what makes one driver intrinsically faster than another on a physiological level is not a well-researched subject. But it’s not about reactions – which is the physical asset which most obviously begins to decline with age.
We know this because there have been many tests done of F1 driver reactions – and the outcome is completely normal; a range from fast to slow, just as in any control group of non-racing drivers. One of the greatest racing drivers of all time, Michael Schumacher, had notoriously poor reactions when measured.
“About the same as mine,” related his then-boss Ross Brawn. Dr. Ricardo Ceccarelli, whose Formula Medicine establishment has worked with a high proportion of the F1 grid of the last three decades, has conducted this test as a matter of routine. He says: “The range is completely normal from fast to slow reactions with the group. My secretary actually had one of the best scores.”
It's not about reactions, it’s about feel. Reactions measure the response time of our central nervous system to a stimulus. Research conducted by defence contractor (and one-time Williams sponsor) QinetiQ to determine physical suitability of candidates for fighter pilot roles found that sensitivity to rotation and yaw (the very things a racing driver is using to feel and balance a car through a corner) came from receptors in our lower spine which pass messages sub-consciously (and therefore instantly, with zero delay) to our middle ear.
This would seem to suggest that the effectiveness of this neural pathway is what actually differentiates who can feel a car better than someone else and probably therefore how naturally quick they are.
If you are feeling what the car is about to do better than the next person, you can be making inputs earlier. Which to the untrained eye could look like faster reactions. But there’s no correlation between the fast and slow reactions and the fast and slow drivers. It’s a myth.
Throughout his career, Hamilton has found time from most other drivers in the transition between braking and turn-in.
His natural way is to brake late and hard, using the resultant extreme pitch to load the front tyres up, turning in slightly early, then, as he releases the brakes, having the rear of the car rotate around the front as the front tyres suddenly have more grip to give, once unburdened from having to provide braking force. The sensitivity in that tiny millisecond moment to prevent that rotation from building into a time-consuming slide is what has allowed Hamilton to make that work for him. It’s all about how he is distributing the load between the four contact patches in a very dynamic way.
Other drivers, with their own distinct physiological make-ups, have their own distinct areas of advantage. But it all has to work within the constraints of the characteristics of the car.
If a car does not respond well to a particular technique because of its own set of traits, then the driver who finds time relative to other drivers through that technique will have an artificially low ceiling imposed upon them.
We’ve seen this several times with Max Verstappen and Red Bull, when the car has not had the front-end response he needs to work his magic. With the car like that in the early parts of the ’22 and ’23 seasons, we saw that Sergio Perez was genuinely competitive with Verstappen. That wasn’t because Perez was suddenly faster than he’d ever been. It was because Verstappen’s ceiling was being limited.
So, another myth which needs to be put to bed: the ‘fastest driver’.
There is hardly ever such thing as a definitive ‘fastest driver’. That can be a different driver from one day to the next, depending upon what limitations the car is putting on their respective skill sets. Some drivers have a wider skill set than others – Fernando Alonso springs to mind. But sometimes only at the expense of the peak performance.
But when a super-skilled driver has a car which rewards his skillset fully, we can invariably see very special things from them and it is this which generally forms the perceptions. Max Verstappen is one such, Lewis Hamilton has been another, Charles Leclerc can do very special things with a car just as he likes it.
Hamilton’s skillset has not been a good match with the ground-effect generation of car. Running with such tiny ride heights – and with very little difference between front and rear ride heights – means they do not pitch and dive like pre-22 cars.
Especially with the anti-dive geometry angles of the suspension in order to keep the aerodynamic platform stable (so as to be able to run the cars yet-lower).
But in 2022 and '23 Hamilton was still generally well-matched in qualifying speed with team-mate George Russell (0.012s in Hamilton’s favour in '22, 0.017s in Russell’s favour in '23).
Up to Canada '24, there was still only hundredths between them. Post-Canada that gap ballooned dramatically. From Canada to the end of the season, Hamilton’s deficit to Russell was in excess of 0.3s.
So, what happened in Canada? A more flexible front wing.
This was enormously helpful to balance the car through the different speed ranges, through better resolving the conflict between low-speed understeer and high-speed oversteer.
Using a more aggressive front wing angle would counter the low-speed understeer and that flap angle would deflect flatter at speed, so de-powering it relative to the rear wing, keeping the car stable in the high-speed.
It made the Mercedes more competitive (just as the same technology had earlier helped transform the McLaren from Miami), but it hurt Hamilton relative to Russell. Because it allowed the Mercedes to be run lower. Meaning there was even less pitch under braking into slow corners, so Hamilton’s technique was being neutralised even further.
As Hamilton wrestled with the car, he’d then start using the throttle to help make that rotation – and this would overheat the rears.
Around fast-corner tracks – Silverstone, Spa – where not much braking into slow turns is required, Hamilton was super-fast.
Ferrari didn’t follow this front-wing route, nor did Red Bull. Ferraris of the last few years have been terrific in short, low-speed corners. Better than any other car.
They've responded fantastically well to Leclerc’s ability to get quick and efficient rotation into the corner, with the help of some very intricate footwork in overlapping the brake and throttle.
Although the car will then tend to oversteer, Leclerc has a great feel of how to maintain momentum and not allow the oversteer to scrub. He’ll typically have the whole car floating at this stage, the fronts sliding too, but the car in a state of mild oversteer.
It’s fantastically effective around Monaco and Baku and he is the absolute master at both those tracks. But if the car is in low-downforce trim, without enough rear end to remain gripping even in oversteer, his style is less effective. The oversteer will gain too much momentum if pushed as hard as he likes to.
In these situations Carlos Sainz would usually be faster.
So we have a scenario with Hamilton in a ’25 Ferrari where he might just find a car which overlaps with his natural style much better than the Mercedes of the last few years, with a mechanical suppleness which overcomes the inflexible nature of these cars.
In which case we’ll likely see a fascinating to-and-fro contest between him and Leclerc.
Or, we might see Ferrari pursue that flexi-wing technology to an extent where Hamilton is every bit as stymied as he has been in the '24 Mercedes.
