Over the past 20 years, several drivers have arrived at Ferrari as world champions, but have not been able to replicate the success of the pounce horse. Lewis Hamilton says he is determined to beat that streak.
Since Ferrari last won the Driver’s Championship with Kimi Raikkonen in 2007, the team has boasted Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel. Hamilton said the two-week break from the final race allowed him time to run multiple meetings with Ferrari staff.
“The reason is that there’s a huge potential within this team,” said Hamilton, who won a record seven world championships with McLaren and Mercedes.
“Passion – nothing close to it, but it’s a huge organization, there are many moving parts, and not all of them are firing on every cylinder you need.
“That’s why the team ultimately didn’t have the success I think I deserve, so I feel it’s my job to challenge everyone on the team, especially those who are making decisions.
“If you look at the teams over the past 20 years, they have had great drivers: Kimi, Fernando, Sebastian – the world champions. But they didn’t win the world championships (since 2007).
“So I’m putting up an extra distance. I’ve been very fortunate to have experienced it with two other great teams. Things are different because of different cultures, but I think if you always go the same path you get the same results.
“They have responded incredibly. We’ve improved in so many areas, through marketing, everything we offer for our sponsors, and the way our engineers keep working.
“I’m here to win. It’s crunch time. I really believe in the possibilities of this team. I really believe they can win multiple world championships that advance. They already have an incredible legacy. But in my time, that’s my only goal.”
Ferrari arrives at the Belgian Grand Prix with a new rear suspension that ran on the day he filmed last week at Muguero, and says Hamilton can hardly learn from that scenario, but believes the sprint format could also delay the team’s full understanding of the scope of profits.
“We can test the suspension tomorrow, but we’re sure we’ll learn from it,” he said. “You’ll find a way to fine-tune it and then try to extract performance from it. There’s no difference in the simulator. But I’m sure there’s probably an advantage on different circuits.
“For me, what’s positive is that you’re arriving on the day you see a new bit coming. You know you’re undergoing development, because in general there was an upgraded floor in Bahrain. Then it took quite a while to get another upgrade, so I think it was Austria.
“If you look at some of the other teams, like Red Bull often does, or Mercedes, bringing in small pieces every weekend. These are similar to big chunks along the way. So I was really happy to see clearly that there is a big push in the factory.
“We don’t have much time, so we need to double it. We need to get a lot of information from both cars. We need to do the entire session. If it’s wet, it really hurts your learning. But in terms of fine-tuning the car, we rarely optimize it completely this weekend.
