Lewis Hamilton has shown that driving for Ferrari can be one of Formula 1’s great privileges as it carries with it a sense of grandiose like no other team.
Around 3,000 fans turned up to watch Hamilton Fiorano for his debut with the team last week, with him completing 30 laps in the SF-23.
Hamilton is expected to complete more laps in private tests before the new season, with Ferrari set to unveil their car officially on 19th February.
There is a lot of anticipation around the move to Ferrari for Hamilton, as it is seen as the last roll of the dice as he attempts to earn an eighth world title.
Ferrari is one team a lot of drivers come into F1 with the goal of driving for, given their illustrious history and adoring fanbase around the world. But Charles Leclerc thinks there is one downside to driving for the team when discussing it with RacingNews365.nl.
Charles Leclerc pinpoints ’emotional’ connection driver have as downside to Ferrari
Driving for Ferrari comes with a lot of passion given it is the only team to have contested every race since the championship began in 1950.
While every driver wants to be part of the history of the team, Leclerc does think there is one downside to driving for the Maranello-based squad.
“The mentality within the team really improves. I’ve always said that Ferrari is a great team because there’s so much passion going around, because that makes everyone want to work just that extra hour longer or just want to show that extra effort to change things,” said Leclerc.
“But if things go wrong, we are more affected by our passion, because everyone has a kind of emotional connection with the team. That may be a little less with other teams than with us. But we have taken this step and although the passion is still there, I do notice that we now react less emotionally to setbacks. That’s a positive, if you ask me.”
Lewis Hamilton could suffer from a rule change this year
Hamilton ‘surprised’ the Italian media by attracting such a large crowd to Maranello this week, which shows just how anticipated this move is and how the fans expect him to bring success.
A smooth winter will be important to his chances of being able to succeed, however, there could be one rule change that affects Hamilton this year.
The Testing of Previous Cars ruleset is now restricted to 1,000km across four days, and Hamilton has already used at least 10% of this allocation this year.
Ferrari were one of the teams that wanted to push the rule through, but it could end up backfiring on them in the future.
Leave feedback about this