Formula 1 commentator and pundit Alex Brundle has identified a key issue in braking that is causing problems for Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari.
A Sprint pole and victory in China aside, Hamilton is finding it increasingly difficult to get to grips with his Ferrari SF-25.
Having described the car as “alien” to him after the Bahrain Grand Prix, the gulf between Hamilton and team-mate Charles Leclerc grew dramatically in Saudi Arabia, amounting to half a second in qualifying and over 30 seconds in the race.
Hamilton described his experience at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit as painful, and Brundle has looked into the data to explain why.
“He has talked about moving the car towards him. And he’s talked about moving himself towards the car,” Brundle said on the F1 Nation podcast.
“I look at the data from Lewis every weekend. The trait is the same.
“He goes into high-speed corners and hits a little bit more brake pressure than Charles Leclerc.
“You can draw a line directly up the wheel-speed graph, to the steering trace, and the brake aligns perfectly with a tiny bit of movement. It just upsets the Ferrari everywhere.
“Leclerc is just Mr. Measured on the brakes.
“We know that Lewis had a problem with the same thing, I saw the data, at Mercedes.”
Hamilton’s issue ‘is a killer trait’
Brundle is unsure whether Hamilton can shrug off his braking technique in order to tune into the Ferrari SF-25, adding “Can he coach himself out of a lifetime’s worth of driving technique to move towards the car? We will find out.”
On the flipside, the man Hamilton replaced at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz, who had admitted to struggling to adapt at Williams, looked to get on top of things in Jeddah.
Sainz led team-mate Alex Albon in both qualifying and the race for the first time this season and the Spaniard has already admitted it will take him up to 10 races to get fully acclimated to the FW47.
Hamilton, meanwhile, warned his current form could be “how it’s going to be for the rest of the year.”
Brundle has a similar fear.
“Look at Carlos Sainz at Williams,” he said.
“He has completely engaged with their way of doing. Lewis is still behind the game at Ferrari so you wonder if it is going to be possible.
“It’s a killer trait to have in a car, especially if you’re behind.
“Because you look for the time, and it punishes you again. It gets worse and worse.”
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