(Motorsport-Total.com) – While the balance of power in most team duels this season seems quite clear, the duel at Ferrari still raises some questions after the opener: Does Charles Leclerc have his teammate under control again, or has Lewis Hamilton finally arrived at the Scuderia?
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At the Australian Grand Prix (click here for the race report), the record world champion was only 0,6 seconds behind Leclerc at the finish line. But Hamilton is convinced that he would have beaten the Monegasque if the race had lasted “a few more laps.”
Ex-Formula 1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya emphasizes how crucial it is for the Briton to beat his Ferrari teammate this year. “I think the most important thing for Lewis – and I’m not sure where Ferrari stands in the pecking order – is that he has to find a way to beat Charles,” says Montoya.
“He has to move Ferrari forward and set the focus,” the Colombian adds in a conversation with F1 TV. “There comes a point where you are in a team and your teammate is constantly beating you – then all the development and everything goes to your teammate, and the attention turns to the one who is fastest.”
Hamilton must “be the one who drives it forward”
“So you have to be able to lead that. You have to be the one who drives it forward.” If Hamilton were to be inferior to his teammate as in the previous year, Ferrari would focus on Charles Leclerc again this season, Montoya believes.
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But the 50-year-old is convinced that Hamilton actually has the chance this season. “Absolutely, he can do it,” Montoya believes. “But I think he has to make sure that his inner group, meaning the team on his side of the garage, works extra hard and is just as committed as he is.”
“I think as a driver, that’s the most important thing that many underestimate: how well you work with the people in your garage and how hungry they are to win with you.” In addition, the new Formula 1 cars apparently suit Hamilton.
Is Hamilton coping better with the new car?
“He never really got to grips with the ground-effect generation of rules we’ve had since 2022,” adds ex-Formula 1 driver Jolyon Palmer to F1 TV, recalling: “Neither Mercedes nor Ferrari – the teams he was with never had the top car.”
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“But I always had the feeling that he was never really at one with the car,” says the Briton. “So this generation of cars no longer has ground effect like before. They are not as strongly rooted to the ground as they were back then with the Venturi tunnels, where you wanted the car as low as possible to use the airflow underneath and generate downforce. This is different.”
Now the driver can feel his car better again, says Palmer. “And I think that will help Lewis. He will feel the car a bit more, whereas in the last generation he had more of a numb feeling. Maybe that suits him.”
In return, there are other challenges: “There are difficulties with braking. A lot of energy is dissipated in the corners. The cars stop using energy. There is ‘lift-and-coast’ or so-called ‘super-clipping’ when the cars reduce power in corners.” (Explained: The ABC of the “new” Formula 1)
Or does the Ferrari SF-26 suit Leclerc better?
“It’s a strange way to drive the car when you sometimes decelerate heavily in the big braking zones,” believes the former Formula 1 driver. “That was perhaps not necessarily one of Lewis’s great strengths. He loves to hit the brakes hard and have a stable rear end.”
During the test drives, it was already possible to observe how the rear of the Ferrari SF-26 begins to “dance” and breaks out more easily with aggressive driving. “I have the feeling that this car might suit Leclerc or Verstappen better.”
“We’ll see. Maybe it will be better for Lewis. There are arguments for and against,” says Palmer. The opener in Australia was already very promising for Lewis Hamilton, who was able to keep pace with Charles Leclerc.
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