Success breeds expectation as Lewis Hamilton, who has enjoyed both like few other drivers in Formula One, knows only too well. Having set himself the task of returning a title for Ferrari, anticipation for his first season with the team was off the scale but success has been far from forthcoming. As the Scuderia have struggled the seven-time champion has been drawing on every bit of experience in what may be the defining challenge of his storied career.
At the Hungarian Grand Prix this weekend Ferrari announced they were extending their contract with team principal, Fred Vasseur, backing the Frenchman who was instrumental in bringing Hamilton on board to complete his mission of reforging Ferrari into a championship-winning outfit after underachieving for so long. However as the season approaches its summer break, with 10 races to come after Budapest and Ferrari winless, Vasseur still has much to achieve.
Hamilton has been outspoken in his support for Vasseur since he made the switch after 12 years with Mercedes but, during a season of acclimatisation and adaptation to a new team, the British driver has appreciated that he must do more than drive. Rather it seems, as Michael Schumacher managed to such great success with Ferrari, to take a leadership role.
It is believed Hamilton was somewhat taken aback at the team’s organisation and methodologies when he began working with them and that he felt the decision making process was ungainly. He has repeatedly stressed he is convinced they have the talent in personnel to succeed but it has become clear he thinks they must be utilised better.
At Belgium last week he was unusually candid in revealing he had held a series of meetings with the key players at Ferrari: Vasseur, the chair John Elkann and the chief executive, Benedetto Vigna. Moreover he had gone as far as compiling two documents detailing suggestions for the progress he believes is needed to turn around Ferrari’s fortunes, an admission that caused no little stir.
One of said submissions was about the car, where he thought it could be improved and more crucially where they might take it under the new regulations next year. This might be considered the due diligence of any committed, ambitious and thoughtful driver. However of more significance was the second aimed at the operational approach at Ferrari, the “structural adjustments” he believed were required.
“It is a huge organisation and there’s a lot of moving parts, and not all of them are firing on all the cylinders that [they] need to be,” he said. “That’s ultimately why the team’s not had the success that I think it deserves. So I feel that it’s my job to challenge absolutely every area, to challenge everybody in the team, particularly the guys that are at the top who are making the decisions.”
For the 40-year-old Hamilton there is urgency to this task. Ferrari is surely his last shot at claiming a record-breaking eighth title that would end the team’s drought stretching back to 2007 for a drivers’ championship and 2008 for a constructors’. He is more than aware that since then the Scuderia has come close but still failed to deliver even with former world champions Fernando Alonso and then Sebastian Vettel at the wheel.
Over 11 seasons between 2010 and 2020, there were many wins for Alonso and Vettel but still ultimately the team could not seal a championship. Hamilton’s actions and attitude reveal a determination that if he too is to fall short it will not be through a lack of effort on his behalf.
“I refuse for that to be the case with me, so I’m going the extra mile,” he said. “I’ve obviously been very fortunate to have had experiences in two other great teams. And while things for sure are going to be different, because there’s a different culture and everything, I think sometimes if you take the same path all the time, you get the same results. So I’m just challenging certain things.”
That the best use of the human resource in F1 can be gamechanging could not be better illustrated than with the extraordinary resurgence Andrea Stella has wrought at McLaren in just over two years. Moreover there are also indications that internally Hamilton is already making a difference. “The response has been amazing to the steps that we’ve taken in all areas,” he said in Hungary. “The passion and the desire to continue to do better is what’s the most amazing thing.”
On track there is a sense that for all that Hamilton has struggled with the car this year, without a podium for 13 races, the longest period of his career, he remains as sharp as ever. His recent drives at Silverstone and Spa were proof enough of that and his call to switch to slick tyres in Belgium evidence that his instincts remain finely honed.
Hamilton is then putting the building blocks in place, confident that if the team can deliver he will too, having already done the hard yards behind the scenes this season.
In first practice at the Hungaroring Hamilton and his teammate Charles Leclerc continued to work with the new rear suspension Ferrari brought to Spa and which they hope will develop into a serious improvement for the car. They finished fifth and third respectively in a session which was once more dominated by the McLarens of championship contenders Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. In the second session McLaren were once more on top, with Norris again leading Piastri by two-tenths. Leclerc was third and Hamilton sixth, with Max Verstappen in 14th, very much struggling with the balance of his ride. The Dutchman’s difficult afternoon was further compounded as he was investigated for throwing a towel, left in error in his car, from the cockpit while on track and issued with a warning for an unsafe release.
Norris on Friday looked to ease the pressure on the title race, saying that it does not matter if he fails to beat Piastri to the world championship because “in 200 years we will all be dead”.
Asked if he needs to get under the Australian’s skin to land his maiden F1 title, Norris replied: “I don’t enjoy that. In 200 years no one is going to care. We’ll all be dead. I am trying to have a good time. I still care about it, and that’s why I get upset sometimes and I get disappointed and angry at myself. And I think that shows just how much I care about winning and losing.
“But that doesn’t mean I need to take it out on Oscar. I just don’t get into those kind of things.”
