How has Lewis Hamilton ‘figured out’ Ferrari’s F1 car?

Lewis Hamilton has hinted at the progress he made with Ferrari’s 2025 F1 car during the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend.

The seven-time world champion was left deflated after qualifying a disappointing ninth in Bahrain but turned in a strong recovery drive to fifth in Sunday’s grand prix.

After the race, a more upbeat Hamilton suggested he had “figured out how the car likes to drive” after an up and down start to life at Ferrari across the opening four rounds.

Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Hamilton provided some insight into where he made gains with his driving style.

“I don’t want to go too much into detail, it’s just driving style [related],” Hamilton told F1.com in Jeddah.

“Every driver has a driving style and my driving style has worked for many, many years. Naturally you adapt it over time but this one needs a bit more of a drastic shift. I found a couple of things that worked in the last race.

“Implementing that everywhere I go will be a challenge and I know that, particularly when you are in qualifying, you need to push to get that extra bit, I can imagine myself falling straight back to my old ways.

“So that’s something I’m just going to have to stay patient with and diligent with, which I’m going to start with from tomorrow.

“My focus this weekend is driving style, really getting on top of the circuit, getting into a rhythm. This is a circuit, a bit like Monaco or Baku, you have to get into a rhythm as early as possible and then just make incremental gains from there and not be overdriving.

“I’ve got a lot of work to do to adapt the way that I approach corners, but it’s not impossible. It might just take a little bit of time, but hopefully not too long.”

How big a challenge is this for Lewis Hamilton?

The 40-year-old Briton, who has largely been outperformed by Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc, said: “This track is incredible and I know the team have done well here in the past.

“Every time I go to a new track I’m learning new ways that they like to set the car up for all this different circuits, which is different to how I had done it in the past.

“Lots of positives to take from last week. I’m hopeful that I can apply them this weekend. It may not all be perfect but I’ve just got to keep building on that.” 

Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Hamilton added: “I don’t see it as bigger or smaller [a challenge] than others.

“Charles has obviously driven this car for a long time. The driving style he has has worked perfect with the car. He loves sliding the rears, he likes a really oversteery car, which is really impressive to see.

“Also just from the moment we get to the weekend, he doesn’t really change the car a huge amount. They kind of know where to start with from the previous years.

“I’ve tried pretty much everything now with the car, so I’ve learnt what does and what doesn’t work.

“Then just in terms of the inputs that I put into the car, I’m adjusting those to hopefully start to extract more performance.”