Lewis Hamilton’s wealth of System 1 expertise places him in the very best place to evaluate the brand new technology of automobiles – and he’s having fun with what he’s driving to date.
The seven-time F1 world champion is getting into the fifth main rules overhaul of his profession and has usually been vocal about which period of automobile he has most popular to race with, particularly after a gruelling expertise within the ground-effect interval of 2022-25.
Maybe this provides gas to Hamilton’s positivity over the brand new technology of F1 automobiles which made their official observe debuts on the Barcelona shakedown this week, the place the British driver was available to check out Ferrari’s SF-26 following a filming day run at Fiorano after its launch final week.
Hamilton, who unofficially set the quickest lap of the shakedown with a 1m16.348s and contributed to Ferrari’s complete of 444 laps of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya with team-mate Charles Leclerc, says the brand new F1 automobiles are extra pleasant to drive as they’re extra forgiving than the knife-edge stability that was an indicator of the ground-effect automobiles.
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“The automobile technology is definitely a little bit bit extra enjoyable to drive,” Hamilton instructed F1 after the Barcelona shakedown. “It is oversteery and snappy and sliding, nevertheless it’s a little bit bit simpler to catch. I’d positively say extra pleasant.
“However we positively have work to do to enhance, in fact, like all people does. However I believe we have had nice debriefs. Everybody’s actually on it. I actually really feel the successful mentality, like, in each single particular person within the workforce greater than ever. So it is a optimistic.”
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Picture by: Ferrari
Hamilton’s feedback adopted an upbeat evaluation of Ferrari’s shakedown programme, which included the weird plan to run in moist circumstances on Tuesday. Pink Bull was the one workforce to affix Ferrari on observe as soon as rain arrived, however the British driver was desirous to expertise the SF-26 within the moist, having had the “very onerous” studying curve of his first wet-weather motion in a Ferrari being in final yr’s Australian Grand Prix.
“It has been a very pleasant week, truthfully. I believe an enormous quantity of labor over the winter on my aspect, however then what the workforce has executed over the winter to make modifications going into the take a look at [is positive],” he defined.
“A little bit of an uncommon begin to the week once we examined and had an entire moist day, which was not one thing you’d usually go for, however final yr I went to the primary race and the Sunday of the particular race was the primary time I had pushed the Ferrari, and that was a really onerous race. So it was good to have that have and get that data.
“After which simply to see the mileage that we have been in a position to get the final couple of days, resulting from simply a lot nice work from all of the individuals again on the manufacturing unit, which I am actually grateful for as a result of having consistency, not having issues…
“After all, there’s at all times small issues, however we did not actually have any downtime moments, whereas I am certain maybe they might probably come up within the subsequent weeks, however in any other case it is a actually, actually stable couple of days.
“After which when it comes to simply understanding the automobile and the stability, we’ve loads much less downforce than earlier years.”
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