Over the previous 20 years, a number of drivers have arrived at Ferrari as world champions, solely to fail to copy their success for the Prancing Horse. Lewis Hamilton says he’s decided to interrupt that streak.
Since Ferrari final received a drivers’ championship with Kimi Raikkonen in 2007, the staff has boasted Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel – plus Raikkonen for a second stint – as world champions who’ve joined after which failed so as to add to their championship tallies. Hamilton mentioned the 2 week break because the final race has allowed him time to hold out a number of conferences with Ferrari personnel, together with delivering paperwork to the staff for dialogue and suggestions regarding what he feels he must be profitable.
“The rationale for it’s that I see an enormous quantity of potential inside this staff,” mentioned Hamilton, who received his record-equaling seven world championships with McLaren and Mercedes.
“The fervour – nothing comes near that. But it surely’s an enormous group, and there are plenty of transferring elements. And never all of them are firing on all of the cylinders that they have to be.
“That’s finally why the staff has not had the success that I feel it deserves. So, I really feel that it’s my job to problem completely each space, to problem all people within the staff — notably the blokes which are on the prime who’re making the selections.
“In case you take a look at the staff over the past 20 years, they’ve had superb drivers: Kimi, Fernando, Sebastian—all world champions. Nonetheless, they didn’t win a world championship [since 2007]. And I refuse for that to be the case with me.
“So, I’m going the additional mile. I’ve been very lucky to have had experiences in two different nice groups. Whereas issues are completely different as a result of there is a completely different tradition and every little thing, I feel if you happen to take the identical path on a regular basis, you get the identical outcomes. So I’m simply difficult sure issues.
“They’ve been extremely responsive. We’ve been enhancing in so many areas – by means of advertising and marketing, by means of every little thing we’re delivering for sponsors, the best way the engineers proceed to work. There’s nonetheless plenty of enhancements to be made, however they’ve been very responsive. Finally, I’m simply making an attempt to create allies throughout the group and get them geed-up – get them pushing.
“I’m right here to win. It’s crunch time. I actually imagine within the potential of this staff. I actually imagine they’ll win a number of world championships transferring ahead. They have already got an incredible legacy. However throughout my time, that’s my sole aim.”
Ferrari arrives on the Belgian Grand Prix with a brand new rear suspension that ran throughout a filming day at Mugello final week, and whereas Hamilton says little could possibly be discovered in that situation, he believes the Dash format might additionally delay the staff absolutely understanding the extent of the features.
“We’ll get to check the suspension tomorrow, and I’m certain there’s going to be learnings from it,” he mentioned. “We’ll work out fine-tune it and attempt to extract efficiency from it. On the simulator, there is no distinction. However I am certain throughout completely different circuits, maybe there will be advantages.
“For me, the optimistic factor is arriving on the filming day the place you see that new bits are coming. You see that we’re getting growth. As a result of normally, we had an upgraded flooring in Bahrain. Then it was fairly a while earlier than we bought one other improve – I feel it was Austria. And pace-wise, it wasn’t essentially what I assumed we might have.
“In case you take a look at a number of the different groups, they create small items each single weekend, like Purple Bull usually do or Mercedes do, for instance. Whereas these are extra like large chunks alongside the best way. So I used to be simply actually joyful to see that there clearly is a giant push again on the manufacturing facility. There are plenty of adjustments, after which to see the outcomes of these adjustments takes time. So I used to be simply actually grateful to see that we bought new elements. We’ll try to put them to make use of this weekend.
“We don’t have plenty of time, so you should double up. It’s essential be sure you get as a lot data from each vehicles. It’s essential do the entire session. If it’s moist, then that basically hurts your studying. However when it comes to fine-tuning the automotive, it’s extremely unlikely we’re going to completely optimize it throughout this weekend. It’s going to in all probability be one thing we’re optimizing over the following few weekends.”
