Esteban Ocon: “Haas and Ferrari are alike, I get why Lewis Hamilton is having a hard time”. Esteban Ocon expresses support for Lewis Hamilton.

Lewis Hamilton, an uncertain start
A fifth-place finish as the best result in the first six Grands Prix with Ferrari was certainly not what Lewis Hamilton had hoped for when he chose to leave Mercedes for a new adventure in Maranello. True, in the two Sprint races in China and Miami, the British champion managed a first and a third place, but those results aren’t enough to lift a clearly disappointing start to the season. Naturally, Hamilton has the excuse of a difficult adaptation to a new team and a SF-25 that is far from the best car on the grid, so the hope is that things will improve in the coming weeks.

Esteban Ocon empathizes with Lewis Hamilton
In the last race in Miami, Esteban Ocon and Lewis Hamilton fought on track for 5–6 laps. And it was the French driver who spoke to the media in Miami about his rival, in statements reported by GPBlog: “Changing teams is very difficult, especially when you switch to a different car philosophy, because Haas and Ferrari have many similarities. So I can understand Lewis from that point of view. Having also driven the Mercedes in the past, I know it’s a very different way of driving and extracting performance from the car. Adapting to this is definitely not easy.”

Even with over 7 seasons of experience in Formula 1, Esteban Ocon is not currently dominating his internal battle with Oliver Bearman, and this is his explanation: “If you come straight from the junior formulas into an F1 car, you simply put aside what you learned before and learn the new car. In my case and especially in Lewis’s, we’ve driven many different cars, but always for the same team.”