Lewis Hamilton has said he’s ignoring all the noise about his struggles to adjust to life at Ferrari, but admits “lots of things” are holding him back.

Hamilton has struggled to adjust to Ferrari after switching to the Scuderia after 12 years with Mercedes, a process of acclimatisation he’s been open in saying could take several months.

Lewis Hamilton working to ‘shorten’ Ferrari acclimatisation

Aside from a brief afternoon in the Chinese Grand Prix Sprint race, Hamilton has come out second-best to teammate Charles Leclerc as the seven-time F1 World Champion has struggled for pace and confidence behind the wheel of the SF-25.

Hamilton has been open about his struggles, going as far as saying he would need “a brain transplant” to get his head around the car, with the challenge exacerbated by a change of power unit that has seen Hamilton having to adjust to using engine braking – a characteristic which was not prevalent on the Mercedes power units he left behind after almost two decades.

Having done five races in six weeks, Hamilton has shown flashes of speed – he was particularly happy with his final stint in Bahrain – and he was asked what is holding him back from achieving that level of comfort and performance on a regular basis.

“Many things. Lots of different things. There’s not one particular,” Hamilton said.

Knowing that he’s at the centre of plenty of media attention with such high-profile struggles, Hamilton said he’s ignoring everything that’s being said about him by pundits who have “no insight” into the inner workings of Ferrari and his own working processes.

“I just don’t really think about it,” he said.

“I try not to really focus on opinions of people that have no insight into actually what is going on – insights from individuals that have never been in my position. So yeah, I just keep my head down and try to continue to enjoy the work that I do with the people I work with.”

Having moved to Ferrari from Mercedes, who themselves have been open about creating less brilliant cars than it did during its world championship-winning seasons between 2014 and ’20, Hamilton downplayed the impact of adjusting to the driving characteristics of those cars as being a factor in his current plight.

“I don’t think it’s anything to do with the past. No, I don’t think it’s anything to do with my past experiences,” he said, also referring to how it took some six months to get comfortable at Mercedes when he first joined the Brackley-based squad from McLaren in 2013.

Might his adjustment be quicker on this occasion? “I really don’t know. I generally don’t. We’re working as hard as we can to shorten that, but it could be longer. Who knows?”

Having returned to Italy after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Hamilton confirmed he’d got in some lengthy shifts in the simulator and had found things to “make adjustments to”, but said the process of embedding himself within the team is something that can only evolve with time.

“I mean, when I joined Mercedes, the first six months were tough getting attuned to working with new people,” he said.

“Obviously, the engineers I’m working with now are used to setting up a car for a different driver and a different driving style, and I’m used to driving a car with a different driving style. So it’s a combination of a bunch of different things.”

Asked whether he is driving on instinct or having to consciously consider his inputs, Hamilton said, “You’re generally always a mixture of the two, but I’m definitely working hard to adjust to this one for sure.”

Hamilton, speaking in Jeddah, predicted more doom and gloom for his weekend in Miami, but was more upbeat about what he might achieve this weekend.

“We’ll do the best we can. We’ve not got upgrades or anything this weekend,” he said, “but we continue to try and optimise the car. Obviously, Charles in the last race did a fantastic job and showed what the car can do in a race. So the goal is to try to replicate that.

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