The Chinese Grand Prix gives Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari a chance to immediately move on from their compromised first Formula 1 race together, and the way they work together will already start changing.
Hamilton’s much anticipated first race with Ferrari was undermined by a qualifying nightmare for the team, as he and Charles Leclerc only qualified on the fourth row of the grid - then only scored five points between them in the race with Leclerc eighth and Hamilton 10th.
In addition to the car being badly suited to the specific conditions of the Melbourne weekend, both drivers were compromised further by a strategic misstep and some slightly messy radio communication.
Ferrari has been tipped by rivals to bounce back quickly in Shanghai, though, having so obviously underperformed against its potential in Melbourne. And Hamilton is also eager to start applying some early lessons.
A first sprint weekend of the season minimises the amount of track time he has to evolve the car to his liking and start to put some early lessons into practice. On the other hand, though, it gives him two qualifying sessions and two races - a different kind of “crash course” to the one Hamilton described last Sunday.
Although Hamilton’s debut was not a grand success, it also wasn’t terrible. A wet race was always likely to be tough given it was his first time in such conditions in a Ferrari, and he admitted he “did feel like I was in the deep-deep end”.
His progress in the dry probably went unnoticed by anyone not watching closely, because his headline times didn’t offer much in any session. There was no indication that Hamilton was lost, although at times he was perhaps a little overwhelmed by what to do to improve, and how to do it most effectively.
Hamilton admitted he was not yet in a position to automatically know what to change on the car to address specific issues. He has been extremely hungry to learn, and happy to take advice that might normally be dished out to a rookie not a seven-time world champion, but says he will now start to be more proactive rather than just following Ferrari’s lead.
“We’re just going to set the car up a bit different this weekend,” Hamilton said on Thursday in China.
“I’m still having to take a viewing seat how the team operates. It was the first weekend to see how they operate on the race weekend, which is different to testing – how they like to set the car up, the changes they like to make during the weekends.
“As I get more and more comfortable and more knowledgeable about the car, I can start making more decisions, and say, ‘actually, this is the set-up change I want to go with’.
“Already this weekend I'm having those discussions, and gonna lean a little bit more with adding my experience.”
Radio exchanges “over-egged”
The Australia race was laced with stress tests of another familiar old Ferrari weakness – communication.
Ferrari’s often been guilty of paralysing itself with indecision, issuing unclear instructions to its drivers, or bombarding them with unhelpful information at the wrong time.
A lot of attention, perhaps inevitably, was put on several Hamilton exchanges with his new race engineer Riccardo Adami, who was probably too heavy on information for Hamilton’s taste.
But although it got occasionally tense, this was nothing really out of the ordinary for a driver/engineer combination in the most frenetic moments of a rain-hit race, which are always tough to handle and even more so when they aren’t going very well.
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Hamilton pushed back firmly when he felt Adami was overstepping, which is probably necessary if they are to build the kind of rapport that can ultimately maximise future opportunities like the rain in Australia presented. That’s where Hamilton and his old Mercedes race engineer Peter Bonnington thrived.
“Naturally, everyone overegged, it was literally just a back and forth,” said Hamilton when asked about his exchanges with Adami on Thursday.
“I was very polite with how I suggested it. I said, ‘Leave it to me, please’. I wasn't saying ‘F you’. I wasn't swearing.
“It was just at that point I was really struggling with the car, and I needed full focus on these couple things.
“We're getting to know each other. He's obviously had two champions or more in the past, and there's no issues between us at all. Go and listen to the radio calls with others and their engineers – far worse!
“The relative conversation that Max has with his engineer over the years, the abuse that poor guy's taken! And you never write about it, but you write about the smallest little discussion I have with mine.”
Hamilton is wrong to suggest that tensions between other drivers go unnoticed as Verstappen’s exchanges with Gianpiero Lambiase at Red Bull have been placed under plenty of scrutiny. But he is correct that this was overblown.
There were even examples on the other side of the Ferrari garage in Australia. Leclerc’s own comms with Bryan Bozzi on their side of the garage produced some memorable moments too, notably a genuinely concerned Leclerc complaining about how wet his seat was, and being told in reply it was probably the water.
Funny though it was, it didn’t project an image of a team in sync. Which is rather indicative of how that entire first weekend played out.
“Ultimately we're literally just getting to know each other,” said Hamilton.
“So afterwards, I'm like, ‘Hey, bro, I don't need that bit of information. But if you want to give me this, this is the place I'd like to do it. This is how I'm feeling in the car and at these points, this is when I do and don't need the information.’
“And that's what it's about. There's no issues, and it's done with a smiley face, and we move forward.”
Familiar Ferrari weakness to address
One factor that is out of the drivers’ direct control last weekend was that while Leclerc and Hamilton were already on their way to uninspiring results in Melbourne, the late-race rain sprinkled some extra chaos into the mix - and Ferrari handled it poorly.
It seemed to go back to its pre-Fred Vasseur days of losing its head when a quick strategic decision had to be made.
By opting to stay out longer than others when the rain came, Ferrari blew a shot at a better result by pitting early and making up places. Leclerc thought it was “definitely a missed opportunity” but it also made the result worse than it was already set to be.
That is something Ferrari will be keen to address itself.
Ferrari seemed to give the drivers conflicting information about whether there would be more rain. Hamilton, for example, was happy to stay out and try to ride out the damp patches because he wasn’t aware the rain would intensify and stick around.
Instead of playing the conditions, Ferrari gambled that the rain would disappear, and staying out would vault their drivers to the front. The second thing did happen - but only very, very briefly, as Hamilton very briefly took the lead when Max Verstappen pitted.
So Hamilton has now led a lap in a Ferrari, but only because of a misjudged Ferrari ploy, one which meant the two cars eventually rejoined eighth and ninth - and was on a par with what Racing Bulls tried with Yuki Tsunoda, a team that is historically very fragile strategically.
“It wasn't the race that we wanted, but it's not a moment to throw the toys out of the pram,” said Hamilton.
“One small thing could have made a big difference in our result. But we move forwards. Everyone's still motivated. You’ve got everyone here with their heads high and I think that the energy is still good in the garage.
“We're not gonna be defined by that one race.”
