Lewis Hamilton’s crucial first 100 days at Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton’s first 100 days at Ferrari – from January 1 to April 10 – will be crucial in setting the tenor of his season and maybe even the tone of his time as a Scuderia driver. A dramatic return to form after a troubling 2024 in which he was outperformed by a team-mate for the first time in his career? Or more struggles and questions about whether he has passed his peak? A glorious competitive rebirth or a fading-light payday?

Those 100 days take him from New Year’s Day to the end of the Japanese Grand Prix weekend, with Suzuka the third round of the 24-race Formula 1 calendar. Three GPs will be about all he’ll be given as a period of grace to adapt to his new environment, with Charles Leclerc – a driver with perhaps the most explosive single-lap pace of any on the grid – providing the barometer of Hamilton’s performance.

It’s simple enough to talk through the schedule of his preparations. On either January 20 or 21 he was scheduled to drive an old Ferrari (probably 2022’s F1-75, possibly the later SF-23) around Fiorano before then moving onto Barcelona for a further three days’ running in the old car. These will comprise all of the team’s annual allocation of TPC (Testing Previous Cars) running. The latest version of the regulations limits teams to a maximum of 1000km of such testing, within no more than four days, and on demo tyres without the performance of the rubber used on a race weekend.

Ferrari has devoted all its seasonal allocation to Hamilton to help with his transition. The first time he will drive the new car will be in pre-season testing at Bahrain, held on February 26-28. With teams permitted to run only a single car each, Hamilton will get one-and-a-half days in the new machine (shared with Leclerc) before qualifying for the season’s opening round at Melbourne’s Albert Park. In between those various runs, he will get as much time as he wishes on the team’s simulator.

But these preparations are just the ‘hygiene’ factors of his assimilation; necessary, but not in themselves what will determine his competitiveness. “We know that we have a lot of procedures to assimilate,” says team boss Frédéric Vasseur, “but he is experienced enough to do it. We have the advantage to have the simulator and he will be able to do a race simulation and a qualifying simulation in the simulator, and to be fully prepared with the steering wheel and all the particularities of the car. But I am not worried about this, and it is not the biggest challenge.”

Quite. The real challenge will be elsewhere – and two-fold. Firstly, he must try to find a way to make the car’s natural traits and his own driving preferences dovetail together. Secondly, and partly related to that, he must find his own space within a team which has been focused around Leclerc for the past six years.

The first of these challenges is a potentially troubling one and if he cannot meet it, none of the rest matters. Because Hamilton generally dislikes this generation of F1 car, which is too heavy, on front tyres too weak, to fully reward his key skill, the thing which has previously differentiated him from other drivers: to be super-late on the brakes and still get good rotation into slow corners. As the ground-effect cars have come to run ever-lower, with less pitch and dive, so this has imposed a more insistent ceiling on what he is able to do in that crucial first part of the corner. He particularly suffered when Mercedes switched to its aero-flexible front wing from Montreal. Up to that time he’d qualified within three-hundredths of team-mate George Russell. After it, he averaged over 0.3sec slower. The feature made the car more competitive but increased the gap between him and Russell.

The possible silver lining is that all Ferraris of recent years have had a natural oversteer balance very responsive to the aggressive style of Leclerc. They have always been especially good into slow corners, way better than Mercedes, with a super-sharp turn-in but still good through-corner balance. If that has been retained, perhaps it will open up a window for Hamilton’s natural style to work more effectively.

But Hamilton will be aware he is not going to Maranello because Ferrari is in any way dissatisfied with Leclerc. He’s not going there as a number one, but only as an equal. Leclerc has been a protégé of Ferrari’s all the way from his early junior days, going right back to his link with Jules Bianchi. He’s incredibly fast, brave and mentally resilient – and 13 years younger than Hamilton. Without a world championship to his name yet, he will be motivated not only for the title but also to compare well with the seven-time champion. He has everything at his disposal to maximise the team, knows the people, knows the buttons to press. Things which will all be new to Hamilton.

So Hamilton must get the notoriously emotional team onside, must inspire them with his performances as quickly as possible – in much the same way Nigel Mansell did when he arrived there in ’89. Unlike Michael Schumacher, Hamilton is not bringing his team of people with him so can’t do it that way. Sebastian Vettel didn’t really achieve this. Fernando Alonso did so only for a time, until he decoupled himself from the team in the aftermath of Abu Dhabi 2010. Hamilton is equipped to succeed in this. But it will only work if he is delivering in the car. If the hands of time can be slowed for long enough.