'What if the car doesn't suit Lewis? At Ferrari it doesn't take long for them to turn on you'

Having left a Mercedes team struggling to return to its glory years, Lewis Hamilton is pinning his hopes on Ferrari to provide him with a car that he can race to a record-breaking eighth F1 world championship.

But another British figure who also made a blockbuster move to the team has issued a cautionary warning after discovering first-hand the unique pressure that comes from being part of the Scuderia.

John Barnard, who was Ferrari technical director in the late 1980s, said that while Hamilton knew how to win championships, fans and media are unlikely to be patient if he doesn’t quickly get to grips with the car.

“I’m interested to see what happens when Lewis Hamilton goes there,” Barnard says in the latest issue of Motor Sport. “I don’t think he’s as quick as Charles Leclerc, but he’s still a decent racing driver, and he understands how to win championships – not by winning every race but by consistently scoring points. I wonder, too, what happens if the car doesn’t suit him because at Ferrari it doesn’t take long for them to turn on you.

“It’s hard to explain but the Italian media puts pressure on the team, week in week out, and that’s tough to deal with.”

Barnard joined Ferrari from McLaren at the end of 1986, having designed the very first F1 car with a carbon chassis, followed by each of the cars that had powered Niki Lauda and Alain Prost to the three most recent F1 drivers’ championships.

“Ferrari started waving big cheques at me, adding noughts all the time,” he says. “I was the first to re-set the bar, if you like, for what designers or engineers were paid at that time.”

Barnard’s status meant that Ferrari allowed him to set up his own design studio in Guildford rather than moving to Maranello. But it didn’t save him from an early run-in with the Italian media when it emerged that he had put a stop to long wine-fuelled lunches for team members.