The three most important days of Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari Formula 1 switch so far will give us our best indication yet of exactly how this blockbuster move is going to start.
The biggest question of Hamilton’s Ferrari switch was how he’d adapt to Ferrari’s SF-25 and he’s now had two half-days in the car in Bahrain as well as the shakedown running at Fiorano.
Rain disruption cost Hamilton around 30 laps of his Thursday programme but he’s still clocked 115 laps across the first two days of testing.
So what’s his initial feeling with the car? Does it suit him better than the 2024 Mercedes W15 that so often frustrated him?
“I think it’s a bit early to say but I’m really enjoying the car,” Hamilton said on Thursday.
“We’re slowly bonding I think. Yesterday was a so-so day. It was OK. But yesterday we got through all of our run plan. We’re testing a bunch of things. So I’m not doing set-up changes or directing where I want the car to go. We’re just getting through the motions.
“Today was a bit more of getting to explore a bit of my interaction with my engineer. So far I really enjoy driving this car.”
Having spent 12 straight seasons in Mercedes cars, there’s been a lot of learning for Hamilton to do, but by Thursday he’s been able to start experimenting with set-ups with new race engineer Riccardo Adami.
“At the moment, there's still room to explore more, and I'm just bit by bit, just eking out a little bit more each time,” Hamilton said.
“All the settings are so different. So even just brake bias and all those sorts of things, it's much different to what I had in the previous place.
“So it’s not necessarily unlearning what I did before, but kind of relearning this new way of working and where the car likes to be driven.
“It likes to be driven differently. And that's a really fun journey learning that. But at the moment, it feels that we definitely feel the car underneath me.
“I feel that the car is responding to my inputs. Today was a positive day, and making those incremental steps with the set-up. There's still more work to do.
"Times and all that stuff is kind of not massively relevant here. You just got to focus on your programme, and we'll find out in two weeks exactly where we stand.
“We'll probably have a bit of a base feeling after tomorrow of randomly where we are. But it's going to be very, very close.
“I think everyone's done a great job over winter, even Williams looking strong as well, which is great.”
55 days to adapt
Hamilton and Ferrari are in the thick of an intense condensed acclimatisation period with the biggest spotlight of F1 testing inevitably falling on their every move.
Even Hamilton himself noted that fellow champions Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel enjoyed a lengthier build up to their first race with Ferrari, with Alonso’s first day coming 128 days before his first race and Vettel’s first day coming 106 days prior.
Hamilton has just 55 days.
So when will he feel fully comfortable with Ferrari?
“I don’t have a crystal ball so all I can say is we’re taking it one day at a time, we’re really just focused on doing our job, we’re not watching everything else that is happening,” Hamilton replied.
“I’m literally just trying to make sure we’re learning our processes in the car and with every lap and session we get, I’m learning about the car, getting more and more comfortable with all the completely different control systems we have.
“I’m still in the learning phase of understanding the rear suspension, the front suspension, all the different settings that they have for those and the terminology they use for them as well.
“My engineer and I are also learning how we both work in terms of communications. After every session, after every time I go out, basically when I come back in, we’re making adjustments based on the information I give him and vice versa.
“But I think it’s on plan, we couldn’t be further ahead with the short space of time we’ve had.
“I’ve been really looking into the previous great drivers who came along, such as Sebastian and Fernando who started much earlier than me, in November [Alonso’s first day was November 6, 2010 while Vettel started on November 29, 2015] for example.
“So we’ve done a lot in a small period of time we’ve had and I think it’s been really great. Really well reciprocated on both sides.”
Hamilton described his Ferrari stint so far as “the best month” with everyone “solely focused on doing the best we can each day”.
The seven-time world champion is hopeful the good start will be the bedrock for a successful first season together.
“How you start often is very important. I think this past month couldn't have gone any different, and it couldn't have gone any better, like things along the way, they had to happen. Like Barcelona [where Hamilton drove Ferrari’s 2023 car via his first crash] had to happen,” Hamilton said.
“The days that we've had, just every day has been significant and really about just building foundation and whilst I mentioned, we have to cram a lot in a small space of time, we haven't rushed it.
“We still have taken the time but we have just been working flat out in the days, long, long, long days, but that's what we're here for, right?
“I really do think it will pay dividends moving forwards, the work that has gone on, the focus, the communication, the changes that we've made, but there will be more also over the six to eight months.
“This is going to be continuously evolving, but it felt seamless. It's felt easy in a sense of gelling with the team.
“We have not had to force it. It's done it in its own time, and I feel at home.”
Part of that acclimatisation has simply been Hamilton understanding the differences in how Ferrari describes parts of the car versus how Mercedes did in the technical debriefs.
“Roll is still roll, anti roll bar is still anti roll bar but some of the other parts of the geometry there’s different words for it,” Hamilton said.
“I’ve got it all on my computer and I’m seeing it each day and night so that I understand when they’re talking about these different components. Because I’ve done 12 years in another place, we talked about the same thing all the time so I was used to it, I knew exactly what they were meaning. But every time they mention it in the debrief, ‘I’m like what part is that, OK this part’.
“That’s all part of the learning process, and that is what makes it more exciting. It’s all new. That part I’m loving, that newness.”
So what’s the equivalent of Pete Bonnington’s iconic ‘Hammertime’ call-to-arms?
“I haven’t spoken to my engineer about that,” Hamilton said. “I don’t know how it will sound with an Italian accent, I’ll have to find an Italian word probably. We’ll probably find something new.”
