Lewis Hamilton says this year’s Ferrari is the most difficult car he’s ever driven in the wet at Silverstone, after finishing fourth in the British Grand Prix.
Ferrari’s hopes were high going into qualifying on Saturday after impressive pace in the dry on both low and high fuel, but Q3 ultimately ended in disappointment with Hamilton fifth and teammate Charles Leclerc sixth. Wet weather provided an opportunity to make quick progress but Hamilton faded after putting early pressure on eventual winner Lando Norris, and was unable to close the gap to Nico Hulkenberg late on.
“Difficult day I think for everybody,” Hamilton said. “Not the result that I was hoping for, but got some points still … It was the most difficult car I’ve driven here in these conditions.
“I was putting [Norris] under a lot of pressure. I had a chance on Lando into Turn 15. After that I just struggled to keep up, the tires dropped off massively. The car was unbelievably tricky to drive.
“I think, ultimately, I learned a lot, there’s lots to take from the day. It’s only my second time driving in the wet in this car. I can’t even express to you how hard it is. It’s not a car that likes those conditions.
“But having lots of data to take from this, for me it’s to sit down with the people that are designing the car for next year, because there’s elements of this car that can go into the following year.”
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur admits the team didn’t make the perfect calls with its strategy either, although he points out there were other factors that made decision-making a challenge.
“You can say now that it was probably one lap too early [to fit slicks], because he went straight in Turn 3 and 4 and he lost four or five seconds in these two corners,” Vasseur said. “But [Fernando] Alonso pitted before and he was already faster in some corners than all the guys on intermediates.
“It’s the kind of situation that if you wait the others do it before you and it’s always too late and I think it’s quite easy to say after the race ‘first pit stop would have been better one lap before, second pit stop one lap later’.
“But honestly on this, when you have to take the decision on the pit wall it’s always a tricky one because you always have to anticipate. And on top of that we lost the GPS of Lewis for the whole race and that meant we were completely blind and we didn’t know where the car was. It was a difficult one.”
