Lewis Hamilton reveals Ferrari F1 engine deficit to Mercedes and driver fears in WhatsApp group

Lewis Hamilton has revealed the extent of Ferrari’s straight-line speed deficit to Mercedes’ class-leading Formula 1 power unit, and shared driver’s biggest concern heading into the British Grand Prix. 

Two weeks after returning to winning ways and claiming Ferrari’s first grand prix victory in nearly two years in Barcelona, Hamilton labelled a difficult Austrian Grand Prix as being a “reality check” for Ferrari as he could only finish fifth, while Charles Leclerc slumped to eighth after a positive qualifying. 

Seven-time world champion Hamilton once again pointed to Ferrari’s top speed deficit to Mercedes in Austria as being a key weakness, despite the Maranello squad introducing its first ADUO-influenced engine upgrade at the Red Bull Ring. 

Hamilton went further by putting an exact number on how much his team is losing on the straights compared to the Silver Arrows ahead of this weekend’s British Grand Prix. 

“We’ve had some great performances before, but the fact is, and you could see it in the last race, we lose quite a lot of time, I think it's like four tenths a lap we lose in a straight line,” Hamilton revealed to media including Crash.net at Silverstone. 

“So it's hard to recover that through corners. I think we’ve got a great car fundamentally. We’ve just got to continue to work and maximise what we can and get good the best results we can, score as many as points as we can, until we can close that deficit.”

When asked if he fees slightly more confident heading to Silverstone compared to Austria, Hamilton replied: “It’s not that I'm not confident. It's the fact is we got long straights.”

Hamilton followed up by letting slip that drivers have been voicing their concerns about the amount of energy management that will be required this weekend at Silverstone. 

“It's an unprecedented weekend in terms of the power deployment. All us drivers have been talking on the drivers' chat about just how poor the power is going to be through this track,” Hamilton said. 

“We run out of battery power. There's only a few corners to charge the charge the engine. So the K will be switched off for a large portion of the lap. And that's where we will struggle probably the most. The deficit could be twice as big.” 

The Maggots-Becketts-Chapel complex has long been considered as one of the most challenging corner combinations on the entire F1 calendar, but several drivers have warned that the magic of Silverstone’s most iconic corners could be lost.  

“Honestly, I think it's going to be huge,” Hamilton said when asked how different Silverstone will be to drive in F1’s latest generation of car. “If you look at the the speed traces, we start losing deployment going into to Copse. 

“Normally the engine’s screaming as you're going into Copse, and you're holding on for dear life as you go through there, flat out. This year, the engine will be coasting down, most likely we'll be downshifting from seventh to eighth whilst full throttle trying to keep the engine revs higher. It'll be a long, long straight from [Turns] 9 to 10 with no deployment basically. 

“Maggots and Becketts is not going to feel the same, because you have to lift and coast or something through there for a period of time. So, it's it's just a completely different track.

“We’ll see tomorrow. No doubt we'll still get to we'll enjoy it through certain elements of the track where you're not power limited. But the best part of the track is Maggots and Becketts and Copse and Stowe, and in those places the power is just dropping. So I hope it's something they can rectify for next year.”