Lewis Hamilton, 40, was not at all pleased with his debut at Ferrari at the Australian GP at dawn on Sunday (16). The Englishman started only in eighth position, could not understand himself with the car and ended in the tenth position, the last that guarantee score in the F1.
The Briton still saw his team wrap with the tire strategy amid the chaos generated by the rain.
“It was very complicated, and it was much worse than I thought it would be. And the car was so hard to drive today. I’m grateful to have at least managed to keep the car away from the wall, because that’s where he wanted to go for most of his time,” summarized seven times world champion.
Hamilton spent much of the race chasing Alexander Albon’s Williams with insufficient pace to get overtaking while his seventh teammate Charles Leclerc managed to rise to fifth position.
Ferrari’s new pilot had a small chance of jumping to the first positions when it increased the intensity of the rain, but the Italian team took a long time to call him to change his tires.
“We tried, but the information I had was that it would be a short, very fast rain. If the rest of the track was dry, I could keep [o carro] on the track if that [a chuva fraca] It was all that was coming. But it rained more, “explained the experienced pilot.
Despite the frustration, Hamilton considers that his debut for Ferrari was important to his learning from the new team.
“There is a lot to get out of this, and not only acclimatization with the car, the new power unit, the rain, the different settings when driving, at the wheel. I endured as much as I could. I even led it in a moment, but the guidance in terms of the amount of rain that was coming was missing, so we lost,” said the Briton.
The ninth place of Charles Leclerc and the tenth of Lewis Hamilton yielded only five points for Ferrari, only seventh placed in the builders championship.
It was the worst season of the team since 2009, when the team started the year zero and only scored in the fourth stage at Bahrain.
In 2024, the team was second place at the builders World Cup, behind McLaren. The title of pilots, however, went to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
