Lewis Hamilton has endured a difficult start to life at Ferrari, with the Italian team failing to provide him with a car capable of competing for race wins
Bernie Collins has drawn parallels between Lewis Hamilton’s current teething troubles at Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel’s initial challenges at Aston Martin, stressing the importance of trust-building.
Hamilton’s much-talked-about switch from Mercedes hasn’t yet seen him firing on all cylinders.
Hamilton bagged his first points for Ferrari with a 10th place finish Down Under, but his Chinese Grand Prix weekend was a rollercoaster. He clinched a sprint race win, showcasing his prowess, only to be disqualified in the main event due to his car’s excessive wear.
Collins, a former ex-F1 strategist now working as a Sky Sports analyst, reminisced about the weight of winning Vettel’s confidence when he joined Aston Martin.
“When Sebastian Vettel came to us at Aston Martin, I really wanted him to think we were good at our jobs,” she confessed. “I really wanted him to go ‘if she calls me to pit, I’m going to do it’ because I trust the team.
“Now we have had a strategy thing, a radio thing and now disqualification, so it makes the driver unsure,” reports the Mirror.
Hamilton expressed his satisfaction with the team’s efforts to boost the car’s competitiveness after the Chinese Grand Prix. However, before his disqualification was confirmed, the Brit admitted: “We made some changes to try to improve the car and move it forward.
“And we made it worse going into qualifying and it was even worse in the race. Collins acknowledged the issues faced by Hamilton in Shanghai, and how it might impact driver and team going forward.”
Collins recognised Hamilton’s struggles in Shanghai and pondered on how this might affect both driver and team moving forward.
“Lewis was really struggling in the car on Sunday and the car was illegal,” she added. “The changes in set-up didn’t react in the way he wanted to, or he wouldn’t have been so slow in the race, and they’ve been illegal.
“So it is a bump. If they go through it and they find whatever’s wrong, then Lewis can get over that pretty quickly. But it’s one of these little things that adds to the lack of trust.”
