Lewis Hamilton: a difficult 2024 ahead, but encouragement from Ferrari SF-24 performance

While Scuderia Ferrari has at least earned the status of the second fastest car on track in this start of the 2024 Formula 1 championship and seems to be only team that can at least slightly hope to challenge the Red Bull RB20, Lewis Hamilton’s start to the season has been more than disappointing. The seven-time Formula 1 world champion certainly hoped for a better start than a seventh and a ninth place, something probably unexpected given the good prospects of the Brackley-based team before the green lights in the first round of the season, the Bahrain Grand Prix in Sakhir.

The reality is quite different, even for Lewis Hamilton himself, who appeared decidedly more in trouble compared to his Mercedes teammate.

Indeed, George Russell, despite also struggling with the weak performance of the W15 single-seater, still manager to bring home a fifth and sixth place. Nothing exceptional, of course, considering the targets and ambitions of Toto Wolff, but in the general lack of feeling with the new car, the young Briton came out a little better than his more experienced and titled compatriot. Probably this car suits the characteristics of the one who will inevitably be the lead driver for Mercedes in the immediate future, but the click could also be mental.

Lewis Hamilton has no feeling with the Mercedes W15. Since the first laps of pre-season testing at the Bahrain circuit, the W15 has not satisfied anyone in Mercedes: Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, Toto Wolff, James Allison, and other various engineers have been disappointed by the early outings of the 2024 single-seater. The car does not inspire confidence in the drivers, despite Toto Wolff repeatedly stating how it is a fast car capable of delivering excellent performances, which is evidently still well hidden and not properly expressed in these first two rounds of the F1 campaign.

Lewis Hamilton is inevitably suffering from this situation. As has often been the case in the last two years, things tend to take a turn for the worse, and everything inevitably reflects on the track with performances that struggle even to approach those of his teammate. The seven-time F1 champion has been without victories since Jeddah 2021, too much time for someone who has achieved 103 victories and 104 pole positions in their career, and the situation risks getting worse over the course of this season.

So far, indeed, the Englishman has only had one real surge this year, namely when in Jeddah he managed to keep the attacking Oscar Piastri behind, with slightly more worn tires, only to return to the pits and leave him free, but even in that situation, the high drag suffered by McLaren on the straight somehow facilitated the effective defense of the Mercedes driver.

Lewis Hamilton can at least be encouraged by Ferrari’s performance. Inevitably, as the 2024 Formula 1 season progresses, Lewis Hamilton will be closer and closer to his debut with Ferrari, and this will mean zero involvement in the Mercedes dynamics, something that is already happening in these weeks, because we assume that given all the development work that must be done on the W15, Lewis will not be directly involved, and everything will first pass on George Russell’s Mercedes car.

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At the same time, Scuderia Ferrari has taken a clear direction, beginning from a very good base under construction since last June when a sort of version B of the SF-23 car was presented in the Spanish Grand Prix at the Barcelona circuit, the starting point of what then became and still is the SF-24. The Maranello team is ready to unveil the first updates for the SF-24 car, which will be gradually introduced starting most likely with the Japanese Grand Prix until the home race in Imola, with the clear goal of hopefully further reducing the gap with the dominant Red Bull RB20 and giving Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz a better chance to be able to challenge at least the RB20 of Sergio Perez.

Lewis Hamilton himself hopes for this, as the British driver now risks letting 2024 slip away. A season that has started very badly could end in a, let’s say, anonymous manner for the man who current holds most of Formula 1’s records. Nothing can be ruled out at this point in the season, because it will be necessary to understand how much Mercedes will be able to give that decisive boost to the W15 in order to at least approach the performance of the red car from Maranello.

On the other hand, curiosity, desire, and eagerness to see the seven-time Formula 1 world champion with the Prancing Horse sewn on his suit where the heart beats could already lurk in Lewis Hamilton himself, disillusioned after the first two bad appearances of 2024 and eager to take that final step in a legendary Formula 1 career.