Did Hamilton a breakthrough with Ferrari in Bahrain?

Lewis Hamilton After qualifying the ninth to the Bahrain Grand Prix on Saturday, cut off the depressed figure. On the circuit where he won five career victories, his best qualifying round was 0.9 seconds Oscar piastriMcLaren to the position of the pole and almost 0.6 seconds from Ferrari Teammate Charles Leclerc in second place.

The show left Hamilton ninth on Sunday grid and, perhaps more concerned, lack of explanations, why.

“I don’t have many answers for you, I wasn’t fast today,” he told reporters after he got out of Ferrari. Asked if it was the lowest thing he felt from entering the team at the beginning of the year, Hamilton added, “It’s certainly not a good feeling.”

Four False Males races

The first four races of Hamilton’s career Ferrari were difficult to assess from outside. Since the first time he was driving one of the team cars on his private test track Fiorano, he stressed how it was different compared to Mercedes, which has been driving over the past 12 years.

Even for Hamilton’s drivers, it has immediately shown that there will be a period of adaptation to increase to speed. While this period came as a man himself, who often repeated the huge challenge he faced in the exchange of teams in this career, it meant that he would inevitably try to live until the winter that came to Ferrari.

The position of shock and victory in the Chinese sprint plant provided team and drivers a tangible result, which pointed out to follow disappointment together in the first round in Australia. However, the Chinese sprint proved to be an anomaly in Hamilton’s form of the season and its inability to replicate this type of performance, including the Chinese Grand Prix itself, only emphasized the difficulty of the task.

At the end of the third round in Japan, Hamilton felt he had made progress, and said even more promising that the team had found something on his car that would immediately bring him a tenth of a second at the time of the round due to Leclerc. Due to the average abyss among teammates in the first four qualification sessions of the season (Australia, China Sprint, China and Japan), there was the potential to be in Bahrain in Bahrain.

According to all accounts, the mysterious difference between the cars was remedied for Bahrain, but thanks to Hamilton, only the reality of the qualification session was even more brutal.

In Q1 he was marginally faster than Leclerc, in the fourth quarter he was 0.285 seconds slower than his teammate and in the 3rd quarter, when it really mattered, he was 0.597 seconds from his teammate – a larger gap than at any point this year. It was not helped by Hamilton’s first round in the fourth quarter was deleted to violate the track limits in 13th place, but for the final result it was of little importance, because his first attempt was still much slower than his second.

Although Hamilton was embarrassed to explain the Leclerc deficit after the meeting, his telemetry provided some answers. During the first six corners of the wedge he coincided with his teammate before he lost a fraction of a second to 7 and then more than 0.2 seconds at a slow speed of 8.

Leclerc carried 4 km / HSI at more speeds over 8 and again through Turn 10, which resulted in an advantage of the time advantage over Hamilton by 0.3 seconds over Hamilton on the back of 9.

Perhaps the most disturbing of all of Hamilton was no locking or images of overwhelmingly to lose 0.55 seconds in these four corners-he missed the pace of vs. Leclerc.

What was the turn of Hamilton’s day of the race?

On Sunday evening, however, the story of Hamilton’s weekend was more positive. At the finish he moved from the ninth on the grid to the fifth, and it seemed that in the middle of the second Stint had some of the vehicle.

Ferrari decided on an alternative strategy to the rest of the top ten in Bahrain – launched both cars on medium tires, while the rest began on a soft compound – which means he could run for the race longer. Both cars were called to 18 laps, with Hamilton dropped to 11.

In his second round back on the track after the pit stop Hamilton built the fastest lap of the race to this point and overtaken five cars over the next eight rounds to move to sixth place. As a scale of pace he was able to find in his second stint, Hamilton had a 16.7 -second deficit George Russell In the second place, when he re-joined after his stop, which decreased to 11.3 seconds at a time when the race was neutralized by a safety car on the 32 bike.

Compared to Leclerc during the same 14-round, Hamilton lost only 0.6 seconds of the race despite overtaking. What’s more as soon as he passed Esteban ocon For the sixth place on 24 laps, the Leclerc gap closed the 1.5 seconds over the next eight rounds.

Although this comparison is limited to a 14-tap 57-step race, Hamilton’s pace during this phase was connected by a much better feeling in the car-and feeling of optimism for future rounds.

“It was much more positive,” he said on Sunday evening. “Medium Stint was really … I really felt in line with the car, the balance was finally in a good place, and it seemed that my driving style was working at the moment. So I learned a lot from today and this weekend – a lot, probably more than all other weekends.”

He added: “The qualifications are not good enough, but I think that if I get a car where it was in the middle stint and start adding both, then you see that I can race. So if I fix it, it should be a better weekend.”

Hamilton never avoided the need to change his driving style to adapt to Ferrari, but he knew exactly what to change was not a direct process. On the last round in Japan, he revealed that he and Leclerc split up at the weekend when selecting settings, but in Bahrain Hamilton decided to approach Leclerc.

At that time, during the second stint of the race, he unlocked a better understanding of how to access greater power from this setting-especially under braking-and it was the wheels in front of a safety car that provides a seven-time world champion before the next in Saudi Arabia.

“I think what is clear, like people we really got stuck in our ways,” Hamilton said after the race. “And I think I was driving a certain style and a certain way with the same team for such a long time, and now I have moved to a new car and a new team and requires a different driving style and setup.

“I used engine braking (with Ferrari) that we have never used (in Mercedes), and many different brakes. We have been on Brembos and I have been to CIS (Carbon Industry) over the past 15 years.

“Getting balance right, it is clear that Charles starts to set up and he will stay with him all weekend and I was far from him last weekend and at the beginning of this weekend. Just before the qualification I approached him, but all the settings are gone and I … so I have to do a better job on the weekend.

Team director Frédéric Vasseur acknowledges the challenge that Hamilton is facing, adapting from Mercedes Ferrari, but says he encourages a little search for a soul from a forty -year -old when he does not compare Leclerc.

“You will not replace 12 years of cooperation (with Mercedes) in two weeks or in two races (with Ferrari),” Vasseur said. “This means we must have improved (with Hamilton), but I think this is true for everyone in the team, in Paddock – DNA for the whole sport is to try to do a better job.

“I think it is good to have Lewis say with this thinking:” Okay, I also have to improve myself and adapt to the car. “We will work on the car to adapt the car to Lewis, but it also has to take a step.

“I think this, between us, is done in a positive way and in a very constructive way. Now the fact that it was a little down a bit last night I like it. Because the guy returns in P10 and says” it’s a pity, “that is not enough. He was certainly disappointed with qualifications because he was much better all weekend. ”

After a false dawn of the Chinese sprint race, expectations about a sudden step in performance will probably be kept under control before Saudi Arabia, but when moving to sets closer to Leclerc and understanding how better use it, Hamilton should be forward in a better place.

“I just had to make it easier for him – I’m doing it so hard at the moment,” he said. “I will try to start in a better place next week and I will not deviate too much. As I said, I think I figured out how the car likes to drive, so hopefully if I can apply it next week, if I can qualify better, I can have a much better weekend.”