Source: REUTERS / Hamad I Mohammed
[Saba Sports News] After Lewis Hamilton was 0.6 seconds behind his teammate in the Bahrain qualifying session and only ranked ninth, the seven-time F1 world champion made a surprising statement: “This year’s qualifying is worse than last year at Mercedes.” This confession revealed a cruel truth – joining the Ferrari team did not usher in a rebirth but instead plunged the legendary 40-year-old into a deeper quagmire of self-doubt. Compared to last year’s 5-19 defeat to George Russell in the qualifying, the data of Hamilton now being 1-3 behind Charles Leclerc reveals an unprecedented positioning crisis in Hamilton’s career. Technical data shows that Hamilton’s steering input in high-speed corners is 23% more than Leclerc’s but cannot make up for the car’s response delay. What’s more fatal is that the nonlinear braking characteristics of the Ferrari car seriously conflict with the muscle memory he developed during his time at Mercedes. Every time he instinctively makes a braking style of the W15 car, the SF-25 car responds with unpredictable tail slides. Now, Hamilton has refused to return to Maranello to attend PR activities, choosing to stay on the track for extra practice, and a real transformation may be about to begin.