The braking “habit” which Lewis Hamilton settled into at Mercedes is proving a problem at Ferrari, claims Damon Hill.

The 1996 World Champion made that claim about Hamilton during qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix, where the Ferrari racer made it out of Q1, but suffered the bite of further errors in Q2, marking the first time Hamilton failed to make the final stage of qualifying since swapping Mercedes for Ferrari.

Lewis Hamilton: Mercedes braking ‘habit’ costing him at Ferrari?

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Hamilton found himself on the brink of Q1 elimination after a lock-up at Turn 17, an error which meant he was forced to fit another new set of Pirelli soft tyres to ensure safe passage to Q2.

With the new rubber, Hamilton did comfortably make the cut, but that opening qualifying segment led to a concerning observation for Hill.

“This is one of the issues he’s had. He’s had problems with moving to Ferrari from Mercedes. They use a different braking manufacturer,” said Hill on BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra.

“So, his feel through the brakes, he’s had trouble getting out of the habit of braking the way he’s always been used to at Mercedes.”

While Hill added that it was the “mark of a champion” when Hamilton delivered at the crucial point in Q1 after that earlier error, Q2 would be as far as Hamilton’s Miami qualifying experience went, another lock-up at Turn 17 doing Hamilton no favours.

Lewis Hamilton vs Charles Leclerc head-to-head

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Hamilton grew accustomed to Carbon Industrie brakes at Mercedes, but Ferrari use Brembo, and Hamilton recently made reference to the vastly different experience between the two.

Speaking to the media, including PlanetF1.com, after the Bahrain Grand Prix, Hamilton said of his Ferrari SF-25 challenger: “It just feels so alien, it really does feel so alien.

“Sometimes I think we all [as drivers] get stuck in our ways, very stuck, ‘I need to keep driving the way I’ve been driving, just make the car come to me a bit’, and that’s not working.

“So I’m adjusting myself to the car, and also just the way the tools that they use, it just drives so much differently.”

To offer “just one example” of that, Hamilton added: “I’ve never used engine braking before in the past 12 years, but here we use a lot of engine braking to turn the car.

“We have much different brakes, the brakes are so much different to what I had in the past.

“In the last stint I had to use the rears to turn the car, and other times you have to put more weight on the front, so it’s probably a bigger balance window than I’m used to as well.”

Hamilton sits P7 in the current Drivers’ Championship standings, two positions and 12 points behind team-mate Charles Leclerc.

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