Hamilton’s first Ferrari race ‘a big crash course’

After finishing 10th in an ambiguous Australian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton claimed that his first Ferrari race was “a big crash course.”

The seven-time champion briefly led the race, but a late-race rainfall caused him to drop down the field.

Hamilton once said, “It felt like I was in the deep, deep end.”

The 40-year-old added that he “was almost always in the wall and didn’t have any confidence in the car.”

A chaotic start to a season at Albert Park included three safety cars, an aborted start, and a number of crashes before the race dried up and ended wet once more.

Hamilton, who finished eighth, said, “I’m grateful I got through it with a little bit of something, at least one point.

“It’s obvious that I didn’t spin or explode.” Although the car has a slower pace than we were able to get this weekend, I do think it has more power.

He claimed that the team left it too late to stop for treaded tires after 13 laps of rain, stopping three laps after Norris and one after Verstappen.

Everyone was going off in the final sector of the lap, but as he said, “I was just passing people and once we got to the start line, it was dry.”

I thought, “This is fine for me, I just have to hold this out, and there are only a few laps left.”

“But then it pelted down just after the final two laps or something, and we probably should have arrived.”

Ferrari made the “wrong decision,” according to team principal Frederic Vasseur, and will have a look at the situation before the second race of the season in China on Saturday.

We can do a better job than we did because it was the first time we had to communicate with the car, which was not a clean job.

We need to improve communication and learn a lot for the weekend. and find out what Lewis anticipates from the communication. Let’s take what we learned today and improve ourselves the following week.

Ferrari had a challenging weekend. After overtaking Hamilton at the final restart, Charles Leclerc, who made the same strategic decisions, moved one place ahead of the Briton.

Vasseur claimed that because Ferrari had been up until the last few stages of qualifying, they had not properly optimized their car for the track at Albert Park.

The circumstances of the present don’t match the performance, according to Vasseur. More representative is Friday to Q2.

“You experience a significant drop when you overheat the tires.” Although the performance’s true narrative is more based on Friday and Saturday, McLaren is still a step ahead.