Lewis Hamilton’s every turn of a wheel and input on the brakes or the accelerator are going to be under the microscope this weekend.
The Australian Grand Prix gives Ferrari and the rest of the world their first taste of Lewis Hamilton racing in the team’s famous red overalls.
After more than 350 Grand Prix starts, Hamilton is facing arguably his toughest challenge since his debut with McLaren at the same venue 18 years ago.
The 40-year-old has worked hard to learn all of Ferrari’s new processes and procedures in the build-up to the race.
Ferrari have provided Hamilton with an updated steering wheel to suit his needs as even one misclick of the various buttons at his disposal could lose him valuable time.
Hamilton and Riccardo Adami have been exchanging notes as the seven-time world champion gets used to working with a new race engineer after such a successful partnership with Peter Bonnington at Mercedes.
However, this could all be in vain should he not perform to the maximum of his ability when the race weekend starts on Friday.
Karun Chandhok was speaking on The Fast and The Curious Podcast with journalist Christian Hewgill about Hamilton’s preparations and the events over the past few seasons that have led to this moment.
While Chandhok was stunned by Hamilton’s data during testing, he’s still been left with one ‘genuine concern’ heading into the first race of the year.
Karun Chandhok has a ‘genuine concern’ for Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari qualifying pace
Hewgill asked Chandhok if Hamilton might spend too much time playing catch-up on a Sunday behind teammate Charles Leclerc to finish on top in the intra-team Ferrari battle to which he replied: “Yeah, I think that is a genuine concern.
“If you look at [the] momentum coming off last year, Lewis didn’t have a great run in qualifying and Charles did.
“I remember, it must have been, maybe three years ago, in the Sky office, I got absolutely beasted by a whole load of people in the office, producers, everyone going, because I’d come off the commentary box, but I’d said, I thought Charles Leclerc was the fastest driver in F1 and the best qualifier.
But like fast forward, and now everyone’s going, he’s pretty good, yeah!
“But I think what’s changed though, and this is a key point, is that I think Leclerc now on Sundays has stopped making the mistakes as well.
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“I think he’s now just taking all of those chinks out of his armoury there.
“If you look at Abu Dhabi, we were all waxing lyrical about Lewis’s amazing drive from 16th to fourth after he had that tough qualifying.
“The fact that Leclerc went from 19th to third, kind of got glossed over, because everyone was lost looking at Lewis’s race.
“And I think that’s the point that actually if Lewis is, I don’t know, call it three, four places behind Leclerc on the grid, and he could be because the gaps are so tight if he loses five, six seconds in the first stint coming through, Leclerc is now too good, I think, to give up that advantage.”
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Leclerc will fancy his chances against Hamilton this season given how much better he knows the intricacies of driving for Ferrari.
He’s widely considered Formula 1’s best qualifier on the grid and that might be how team principal Frederic Vasseur decides to back if both drivers are in contention to win the title.
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Leclerc has promised Ferrari fans he’ll win the title this season which is an incredibly ambitious goal to set.
However, at this stage of his career, it’s exactly what he should be aiming for as the longer he’s up against Hamilton, the more difficult that goal could be to achieve.
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