Lewis Hamilton heads into the first race of the Formula 1 season having been happy with his progress at Ferrari during pre-season testing.
The seven-time world champion has been full of optimism after driving the SF-25 over the course of three days at the Bahrain International Circuit, with him telling media that he felt the “most positive in a long time” after three troublesome years at Mercedes.
Charles Leclerc’s pace appeared to vindicate the assessment that Ferrari is right in the hunt with McLaren and Red Bull, with his race run on the second day roughly half a second slower than Lando Norris.
While it seems like a mile off, as Norris would have won the Bahrain GP by 30 seconds at that pace, it comes with the caveat that the teams all run lower engine modes and higher fuel during testing.
It bodes well for Ferrari heading into the first race at Melbourne, however, there is one aspect to Hamilton’s test that leaves him underprepared according to journalist Scott Mitchell-Malm speaking on The Race.
Lewis Hamilton completed little milage in Ferrari during pre-season testing
Much of Hamilton’s pre-season testing was all about acclimatising himself to how Ferrari operate trackside, getting used to terminology used in debriefs and working with his engineer.
Hamilton only completed a total of 162 laps in the SF-25 over the course of the three days, and heads into Australia without having completed a race run. When Ferrari did try to do one on Friday, it was cut short due to an ‘anomaly’ in their telemetry data.
This leaves Hamilton on the backfoot compared to his rivals, particularly teammate Leclerc who completed runs on three different specifications of tyre.
“There was an obvious downside to Hamilton’s Ferrari test: the milage. Hamilton was among the drivers with the most to learn in the test and yet he ended it with one of the lowest lap counts of everybody. Only Red Bull pairing Max Verstappen and an unwell Lance Stroll managed fewer,” said Mitchell-Malm.
“This was caused by a couple of factors, on Day 2 the unusual sight of it raining on track meant that a lot of teams stayed in the garage for chunks of time, and on Day 3 his race simulation was aborted due to an issue. This limited what Hamilton could work on and to understand how the car behaves in a race stint. In this respect, the test wasn’t as successful as it could’ve been and it means Hamilton goes to Australia slightly underprepared.”
Mercedes are not convinced about Lewis Hamilton’s new Ferrari
Ferrari’s first day of testing was underwhelming for some in the F1 paddock, with Mercedes predicting Hamilton’s Ferrari is not as good as they are making it out to be.
Hamilton has looked rejuvenated since joining Ferrari at the start of the year and will hope that their pace in Melbourne will be similar to how they fared up against McLaren.
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Craig Slater has been told that GPS data shows Mercedes is second quickest in the order, although the team was quick to play things down because of the temperatures in Bahrain being unseasonable cold.
It is set to be an intriguing first race of the season when things kick off and we finally see where the competitive order stands.
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