How Hamilton is finding the answers to the questions he's asking himself
A strong middle stint in Bahrain showed that Lewis Hamilton is starting to find a direction at Ferrari
After qualifying in Bahrain Lewis Hamilton was clearly downbeat on Saturday evening, and he appeared to be a loss to explain why he was only ninth on the grid and 0.597s shy of team mate Charles Leclerc.
His struggles to adjust to a very different car at Ferrari have been well documented, but on this occasion there seemed to be an extra level of frustration.
Inevitably there was some soul-searching that evening, and to his credit he bounced back in the race, pulling off some good moves.
At times he wasn’t happy with his tyres, and having mediums for the opening stint when those around him were on softs didn’t help, but he was far from the only driver to complain.
However what caught the eye was a very strong middle stint on his second set of medium tyres, when he really seemed to get into the groove and even held fastest lap for a while. A gain of four places and fifth place at the flag was a decent result.
“A much more positive day,” he said when I asked him about his race. “The middle stint I felt really aligned with the car. The balance finally was in a spot, and my driving style seemed to be working in that moment. And so I learned a lot from today, and this weekend actually. A lot, probably more than all the other weekends."
The challenge now will be to get the car into that same user-friendly window on a more regular basis.
“The key is to try and get back to it every weekend,” he agreed. “It's clear that the car really does require a different driving style, and I think I'm slowly adjusting to that. And also set-up.
“I've been bit all over the place, a long way from Charles the past two weekends, and then slowly migrating towards him. So I think if I start the weekend in a more convenient spot and apply the techniques that I learned this weekend, hopefully I can improve from there.”
Hamilton is known for his late nights at the track working with the engineers, and typically he’s the last driver to leave the paddock on a Saturday. On this occasion the homework was of a more personal nature.
"I just went to my hotel to sort it out, had the discussion with myself,” he said when I asked about how tough that evening was.
“And I had a really good start today, and I knew that the next day would be a new day. So I just started or tried to start more positive as I said.
“Obviously qualifying isn't good enough. But I think if I get the car where it was, for example, in that middle stint, and I start delivering qualifying, you could see I can still race. So if I fix that, then there should be better weekends.”
It’s easy to be sceptical when drivers talk about the difficulty in transitioning from one car to another, and Hamilton isn’t the only one with issues, as the likes of Carlos Sainz, Nico Hulkenberg and Esteban Ocon are still adjusting.
It’s actually harder for more experienced drivers who have set ways of doing things than for rookies coming out of F2. In the case of Lewis his 12-year stint at Mercedes created muscle memory that is not easy to undo.
“It just feels so alien, it really does feel so alien,” he noted. “I think we all get stuck in our ways, and I’ve been very stuck, ‘I need to keep driving the way I'm driving to make the car come to me.’ But it's not working.
“So I am adjusting myself now to the car, and also with the tools, it drives so much different with all the ECU, the controls that we have, you have to use them a lot different to the past.”
He added: “Just one example is I never used engine braking before, for the past 12 years. We never use engine braking. Well, here we use a lot of engine braking to turn the car. They're much different brakes.
“Brakes are so much different to what I had in the past. Like in the last stint, I had to use the rears to turn the car, and then other times you have to put all the weight on the front. It's probably a bigger balance window than I’m used to.
“It’s a much different car, but even worse qualifying this year than I had last year. So I just keep trying. I'll get there eventually.”
Hamilton still sees plenty of positives in the bigger picture.
“Mercedes is an amazing team, as you know, but the energy in this team is fantastic,” he said. “And the guys are pushing really hard the pitstops fantastic today. They've trained so hard to get the pit stops that they're doing. And I'm adjusting to their pit stops as well.
“And I think we've had really fast pit stops, particularly today as well. And strategy, we're slowly getting on top of things.
“I think today it will be interesting to see what they say afterwards, with whether we would have used a different tyre at any point in the race. But the middle stint was great, and we've got some improvements to make to the car. But I'm sure we can do it.”
Fives races in six weekends is a tough schedule for everyone. Drivers are at least getting a lot of mileage, but they’ve had limited opportunity to catch their breath and properly debrief back at base with their engineers. Hamilton has an intriguing take on the upsides of travel.
“It's been really nice to be at these races, to be honest,” he said. “Because it means less photo shoots and all that kind of stuff. The start of the year was brutal, more shoots and more things I've ever had before. So it's been nice to into this long trip, and get back to what I love doing most…”
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