Lewis Hamilton has admitted that he does not know how to operate his new Ferrari in wet conditions.
Hamilton has had a quiet start to his Ferrari career, the seven-time world champion not featuring at the top of the timesheets.
He finished eighth in qualifying at Albert Park, behind new team-mate Charles Leclerc, despite a dramatic spin in the dying seconds of Q2.
Failing to match his team-mate all weekend, Hamilton will need to come through the order in tomorrow’s race, with rain adding to the challenges.
However, speaking after qualifying, Hamilton admitted that he had yet to drive his Ferrari in wet conditions.
When questioned about how he will handle this, it dawned on the seven-time world champion the scale of the challenge ahead.
“Frickin’ hell, I’ve never driven the car in the wet. I don’t know which buttons I’m going to switch to tomorrow, so that’s going to be new.
“We’re using Brembos, which I’ve not used for a long, long time,” he said of the car’s brakes. “So I don’t know how the Brembos behave in the wet, or what settings we’re going to have to use with this car.”
When you qualify 8th you kind of hope for it to be wet, but I’ve only got three laps to learn the car in the wet and then get out [for the race],” he said. “It’s going to be a shock to the system, but I’m going to be learning on the fly and just giving it everything.”
Lewis Hamilton still adapting to new Ferrari machinery
With limited testing mileage under his belt, Hamilton admitted he still adapting the technical differences and intricacies of the Ferrari compared to Mercedes.
“When you have a problem with the car and you come in, normally when you’ve got the experience, you can say, ‘OK this is where I want to go with it’, but I don’t know which tool to use at the moment. So I’m heavily relying for the first time on my engineers, and they’ve done a great job.”
There’s a ton of tools that I’m still popping out like, ‘I’ve never tried that, what does it do?”
“Braking and through-corner balance is a lot different to what I had [at Mercedes], The mechanical balance shift is much, much different… and the high-speed balance, the low-speed balance is quite a shift.”
Despite the challenges, Hamilton believes he is getting closer to matching Leclerc, who he praised for being on pace immediately.
“I’ve been down all weekend to Charles, who just had it from the get-go from the minute he went out. He knew what the car does but I was just building up to that through the weekend, and I think I got a lot closer towards it in the end.”
Feature Image Credit: Ferrari.com
