Saiba como foi a pré-temporada de Lewis Hamilton com a Ferrari

Liz Hamilton finished her first pre-season with Ferrari in second place, faster than her new teammate, Charles Leclerc. But how was this experience really? Hamilton's move is the main subject of F1 in 2025, and her first appearances on the track with Ferrari caught a lot of attention. What really matters, however, is performance, and the three days of testing at Bahrain were the first real chance to start assessing how fast and comfortable Hamilton is in her new car. And, of course, how competitive this new car will be. For Ferrari, this change aims to revive the end of the champion's career, after her mega-victorious run for Mercedes ended in a disappointing way. This happened in part because Mercedes' cars with ground effect were never good enough to compete for the title, but also because Hamilton had a lot of difficulty adapting to them. So, what is the initial verdict on how Hamilton feels about Ferrari? Well, there is still work for him and for Ferrari, as Hamilton himself admits. But he says he's really enjoying the car. This is already a change in relation to the past, when Hamilton admitted that he hated current cars and that they simply did not fit his style. And it seems that whenever Hamilton had a little difficulty during the tests, it was mainly at a stage when Ferrari had not yet made changes to the set-up to improve the feeling of Hamilton with the car. As we will explain later, Hamilton is still in a sharp learning curve, with all the nuances of driving for Ferrari and understanding his car. His initial feedback, however, is that this is the most positive feeling he's had in a long time. The end of Hamilton's era at Mercedes-Benz was not bad just because he was driving weak cars. At least in the qualifying, he was slower than his teammate, George Russell. Hamilton's natural style is to enter the curves while still braking, and this did not fit in a combination of cars and tires that were very close to instability. There were two theories here. The first said it was a problem with the ground effect. These cars tend to come out of the front and become unstable in the middle of the curve. This is because the ground effect decreases with deceleration, causing the grip to be transferred from the rear to the front during the curve. In addition, Pirelli's current tires do not respond well to any kind of slip. If the front wheels slide due to a little initial understeer and the rear wheels slide due to instability in the middle of the curve, it is a double effect. Then the temperature of the tires increases and the grip decreases even more. These elements are intrinsic to current cars. Hamilton admits that his style is in conflict with what cars need, and he could not adapt as well as others. So that's his limitation. The other theory, however, is that the cars Hamilton drove at Mercedes-Benz brought with them the worst of these unpredictable trends. Russell also suffered from these huge variations in balance. It was quite possible that a change to Maranello would mitigate these difficulties. Genetically, Ferrari cars seem to better tolerate this style of slowing down late and turning hard than Mercedes cars. There is a limit to how much this can be judged based on the tests. Hamilton was still getting used to the car, so he was not at the point of looking for the last tenths. And, as always, it was this search for the last bit of performance that a car behaves well or a driver who seems to be in control can end up getting into trouble. But even with these reservations, Hamilton seemed very comfortable in Ferrari. And he was not having a strange transition between slowing down and turning. A problem that, at certain times, Mercedes drivers were facing. The track conditions were different between Hamilton's laps and Leclerc's, which prevented Hamilton from further improving his driving in Ferrari and also from comparing the two cars with precision. But his best laps on the second day, for example, were very similar. And we didn't see Hamilton exaggerating at the entrance of the curves and, consequently, wasting time at the exits. He did well compared to Leclerc in this regard. And this is the point of style that acts as the main differentiator at the moment. As always, Leclerc made more acceleration and braking overlaps along the lap. This can be very effective in qualifying, especially in Bahrain, where some curve entrances reward the only way he slows down and makes the car turn, keeping the minimum speed unusually high. In curves 4 and 13, in particular, both at medium speed, the front can be excessively overloaded. There, Leclerc manages, in some way, to turn the car while still slightly activating the accelerator. This allows him to accelerate deeper earlier and use all the power to exit the curve. In curve 10, at low speed, however, there is an overlap of brake and accelerator by Hamilton, in which he gains time compared to Leclerc. The excess of accelerator was also evident on the days of Mercedes. So, it is possible that Hamilton has this same characteristic, although less intense than Leclerc, which could be useful if Ferrari manages to live with it. Another small promising indication is that the comparison between Hamilton and Russell while they were together on the track, on the second day, was very similar to the comparison between Leclerc and Chimentonelli. They were fast and slow in the same places, which indicates that the differences were related to the cars and not to the drivers. Negative point in Hamilton's test. The mileage. He was one of the drivers who had the most to learn in Bahrain, but finished the test with one of the fewest laps. Only the Red Bull duo, Max Verstappen and Leon Lawson, and a sick Lancia Skroll, had fewer laps. This was caused by some factors. On the morning of the second day, when Hamilton was supposed to be in the car, a very light rain left the track wet for a long time. This led many teams to stay in the garage for long periods. And on the third day, Hamilton did not do the race simulation. The start of his long run was aborted early, and although he has reappeared, his session was prematurely closed due to an anomaly that Ferrari detected in the telemetry. This obviously limited Hamilton's work. He had faithfully followed the team's program in the first days. The last one should be an opportunity to start pushing harder, to play with accuracy and, of course, to finally do some racing simulations to understand how the car behaves in this condition. In this regard, the test was not so successful. Hamilton goes to Australia a little unprepared, which is a shame. However, he was very satisfied with what he called the foundation for his season. He was delighted with this first month, saying that it could not have been better. Hamilton even mentioned his accident with the Ferrari in 2023 in Barcelona as something that needed to happen, as it was part of his familiarization with what it is to take a Ferrari to the limit. The integration with the team has also been flawless, according to him. This process goes from getting used to a completely new factory in Maranello to the settings and terminology for the different suspension components and things inside the car. For him, it is how to re-learn this new way of working and how the car likes to be driven, in addition to building a good relationship with the team members, including his racing engineer, Riccardo Adami. The result is that Hamilton feels that the wider adaptation follows the plan and could not be more ahead with the short space of time they had. But for better than it started, there is still much more to come. In the end, how well Hamilton is doing in Ferrari is only relevant if the performance of the car is good. The reality is that the Ferrari test was a little compromised and Hamilton admitted in the end that he definitely has work to do to improve. After a encouraging first day, in which Leclerc seemed quite comfortable with the new SF25, the next two days gave the impression that there was a difference between Ferrari and the real parameter of the tests, McLaren. The long simulation of Lando Norris' race on Monday night put him 30 seconds ahead of Leclerc. And even if this is probably an exaggerated difference, it indicates that Ferrari is behind and may even be threatened by an improved Mercedes and an inconsistent Red Bull. The usual difficulties of judging cars based on tests were even greater this year, as in the unexpected cold weather, some raindrops and strong gusts of wind made the conditions vary all the time. Leclerc said that the feeling on the first day was good, but the change of conditions made it very difficult on the other days. Driving became more difficult, since the balance was not totally on point. He faced Norris' mega long run with some reserve, but admitted that it was important to have done the race simulation at the same time to understand where we were failing in relation to them and also in relation to my own feeling. Leclerc also said that we still have a lot of work to be ready for Melbourne, proving that the week was less than perfect. A positive point is that the SF25 doesn't seem to have any great addiction. And if Ferrari could stay so close to the Mercedes and the Red Bull while it is still a little out of tune, it has room to improve, perhaps even more than the others. And knowing exactly where Ferrari is in relation to its rivals in Australia will be crucial to establish the right conditions for Hamilton's performance this season to be evaluated.