MELBOURNE, Australia — Lewis Hamilton’s drive to 10th at Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix was a pedestrian start to life at Ferrari after months of hype and speculation, but it was at least an authentic first experience of racing for the modern Italian team.
“It went a lot worse than I thought it would go,” Hamilton said on Sunday evening.
A classic Ferrari debut it was not. Former world champions like Nigel Mansell, Kimi Räikkönen and Fernando Alonso all won on their first outing in red, but Hamilton never looked like a victory contender on Sunday.
His race carried a familiar feeling for different reasons, especially for anyone who has followed this team for more than a few years. It was a weekend that saw Ferrari fade as the competitive sessions started and a race that quickly became one of muddled radio communications, missed opportunities and a lingering underwhelming feeling that has followed the Scuderia around once too often in the modern era.
Of course, it should be said that it could have been much worse. Australia’s race was like the Albert Park openers of old, a topsy-turvy contest that caught out rookies and former world champions like Alonso alike. The smile that has accompanied Hamilton since we first saw him in the iconic colours of Enzo Ferrari’s team was still there on Sunday evening, and he was in a philosophical mood about how it all went.
“Definitely a big crash course today,” Hamilton told media after the race. “I’m just grateful I kept it out of the wall.”
His view is the correct one to take so early in his spell. There is no obvious reason to panic about his move on the basis of one deflating race weekend. The pace some might have expected straight out of the gate was not there, but mitigating circumstances did exist.
Hamilton did not join Ferrari because he was convinced he could win the 2025 Australian Grand Prix, just like he did not join Mercedes in 2013 certain he would win the first race. Still, the nature of the grand prix highlighted some of the immediate issues facing Hamilton that he needs to tackle if he wants to immediately get the best out this new chapter of his career.
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It did not take long for a clear competitive picture to form in Melbourne. Although Hamilton’s teammate Charles Leclerc had finished Friday practice in a strong position, Ferrari’s challenge faded in qualifying, where McLaren comfortably locked out the front row of the grid. The gap might be different as F1’s calendar cycles through upcoming locations, but the feeling in the paddock is that in dry conditions, the McLaren will be a step ahead for the foreseeable future.
There were more pressing matters for Hamilton than where his car was in relation to rivals; just cutting the gap to Leclerc was the task for most of the weekend. The Brit had been careful to point out how many challenges he faced jumping into a brand-new team, especially after 12 years racing in one place. During Thursday’s media day, Hamilton had revealed that the lap data trace charts Ferrari uses to plot stint times are upside down compared to how he was used to at Mercedes; the man he replaced, Carlos Sainz, has been struggling with the same thing since moving to Williams at the start of the year.
Hamilton had made a point of firsts since joining Ferrari: his first time in the overalls, his first time climbing in the car, his first time driving out of the garage. Sunday’s race was another invaluable one.
“It felt like I was in the deep, deep end today,” he reflected afterward. “Just everything is new, from the first time I’m driving this car in the rain, the car was behaving a lot different to what I’ve experienced in the past. The power unit, all the steering functions, all the things that are thrown to you, you’re trying to juggle all these new things.”
This was never more apparent than in the radio communication between Hamilton and Ferrari’s pit wall. It’s an area Ferrari has been hammered for in the past. Its confusing messages to drivers, whether the cycling from Plan A to Plan D or messages like Leclerc being told to stay out when already halfway down the Monaco pit lane, have been the fodder of meme makers for years, although it is also an area of the operation that has improved drastically under the leadership of team principal Frédéric Vasseur. The Australia race bucked that trend slightly, on both sides of the pit wall.
It was actually a radio exchange between Leclerc and his engineer Bryan Bozzi that produced the first truly viral moment of the new season. The hilarious back-and-forth went like this:
Leclerc: “Is there a leakage?”
Bozzi: “A leakage of what?”
Leclerc: “I have a full seat of water, like, full of water!”
Bozzi: “Must be the water.”
Leclerc: “We’ll add that to the words of wisdom.”
After the race, Leclerc revealed that he had quickly learned the leak had come from his water bottle, as there was no liquid left when he went to drink from the straw inside his helmet the following lap. Bozzi’s reply makes more sense in that context, but it will still go down in F1 folklore as one of the great radio exchanges.
The communication between Hamilton and his side of the Ferrari pit wall was just as awkward. After 12 years working with Peter Bonnington, who would famously utter the call “OK Lewis, it’s hammer time” as an instruction for the F1 great to start pushing, Hamilton is teamed with Riccardo Adami this season. The driver-engineer relationship is one of the most important in the sport and the broadcasted messages, and those you can find that did not make the cut for TV, highlighted two men still figuring out how best to work together. At one stage, Hamilton requested, “Just don’t repeat everything [you say], please.”
Another example of their growing pains came mid-race, as Adami was advising Hamilton that the “K1” setting was available to him on the steering wheel. “Leave me to it, please” was the very polite reply from the seven-time world champion as he tried to keep his Ferrari pointing in the right direction on a soaking track. Talk to any of the grid’s race engineers about their communications with drivers and they’ll tell you the exchanges in the heat of a race are rarely so nicely couched. After all, perhaps the most famous F1 radio message of all time was Räikkönen telling his race engineer to “leave [him] alone” because he knew what to do.
The clunky comms continued later in the race. Ferrari attempted to vault up the order by staying out on dry tires, initially mimicking Max Verstappen‘s decision to do the same.
“Is there more rain coming?” Hamilton asked at one point as the race once again spiraled toward unpredictable madness. “Negative. Just this, hopefully. Let’s see,” Adami replied. “Still raining in the pit lane.”
As Hamilton passed the start-finish straight — completing another first, as he briefly led the race as Verstappen also peeled off for the intermediate wet tire — Hamilton immediately realized what was happening.
“Ah s—, we should have come in,” he said. “More rain’s coming in. The whole track’s wet now.”
It’s difficult to predict the weather, of course, but this all hinted at the lack of familiarity between the two. Many driver-engineer relationships rely on a mutual trust in one another’s calls, or simply knowing each other so well that the deeper meaning of a radio message is instantly understood. Hamilton and Adami appeared to be on a totally different wavelength.
By the time Hamilton pitted, one lap later than Verstappen (who went on to finish second), his frustration was clear.
“I thought you said it wasn’t gonna rain much,” Hamilton said. “We lost a big opportunity there.”
When Adami told Hamilton he had dropped to ninth, the 40-year-old appeared to leave his radio button pushed down, uttering “s—,” before apologizing.
Their relationship and dynamic will only improve. Hamilton himself praised his new engineer after the race.
“I think Riccardo did a really good job,” he said. “We’re learning about each other bit by bit. After this we’ll download, go through all the comments, the things I said and vice versa. Generally I’m not one that likes a lot of information in the race unless I need it and ask for it. He did his best today and we’ll move forwards.”
Vasseur said it’s an area Ferrari must address immediately.
“It was the first race, the first time that we have to communicate between the pit wall and the car, and we can do a better job and know each other more,” Vasseur said. “For sure it was not a clean one at all, the strategy was difficult and we need to find a better way to communicate between the car and the pit wall, but we will learn from race one and it is not an issue.”
Hamilton and Adami have the chance to instantly work on it again at this week’s Chinese Grand Prix. Given how the Australia opener went, Ferrari’s radio communications will be under the microscope in Shanghai even more than usual.
Source: espn.com