MELBOURNE — Lewis Hamilton said he is still lacking confidence in his new Ferrari car after he qualified eighth for Sunday’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
After weeks of hype around his move from Mercedes to Ferrari over the winter, Hamilton took part in his first competitive session as a Ferrari driver on Saturday afternoon in Melbourne.
He qualified one place and 0.218 seconds behind teammate Charles Leclerc and was 0.877 seconds off Lando Norris‘ McLaren on pole position.
Hamilton described his first race weekend with Ferrari as a “big learning curve” and admitted his starting point was lower than he expected after preseason testing.
“I thought I was further along than I was, and then I got here and in P1 [first practice], and I was like, jeez, I’ve still got a way to go,” Hamilton said. “There’s still a ton of tools [to do with car setup] that I haven’t used.
“He’s [Leclerc] popping up like, ‘hey, what about this?’ And I’ve never tried that. I’m like ‘what does it do?’
“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.
“I’m heavily reliant for the first time on my engineers. They’ve done a great job, but in the past [at Mercedes] I would say, this is what I want: this setting, this setting, and I can’t do that anymore.”
Hamilton said his lack of confidence in the car was evident in high-speed corners, which make up a significant portion of the lap around Albert Park.
“The car was so much different from the moment I left the pit lane it was just feeling so much different than I’ve ever experienced here,” he added. “It’s been a lot slower process for me to really build confidence in the car.
“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, is not bad.”
With rain forecast in Melbourne on Sunday, Hamilton is preparing himself for another steep learning curve in Sunday’s race.
“I’ve never driven the car in the wet,” he said. “I don’t even know where the wet switch is really. I don’t know which buttons I’m going to switch tomorrow.
“So, that’s going to be new. We’re using Brembo [brakes] for example, which I’ve not used for a long time. I don’t think I’ve used them for a long time.
“So how the Brembos behave in the wet — I don’t know if they glaze. What settings would I have to use on this car — it’s all different.”
Source: espn.com