Three problems Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari must fix at F1 Chinese GP

There was no fairytale debut for Lewis Hamilton on his first competitive outing for Ferrari at the F1 Australian Grand Prix.

Hamilton qualified only eighth for the season-opening race and finished 10th in a chaotic and wet grand prix in Melbourne after an incorrect strategy call saw him drop down the field.

The seven-time world champion said he felt like he was in the “deep end” throughout the weekend as he endured a disappointing debut for F1’s most iconic team, admitting it had gone “a lot worse” than he expected.

It will statistically go down as the worst F1 debut by a Ferrari driver since Luca Badoer in 2009, while Hamilton suffered his lowest finish in the opening race of a new season ever.

After an underwhelming performance from both driver and team, there is a lot to solve heading into this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix…

Clearer radio communications

One obvious area for improvement is Ferrari’s communications.

After 12 years working alongside Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington at Mercedes, Hamilton did not get off to the smoothest of starts with new race engineer Riccardo Adami.

Adami and Hamilton sounded like they were on different wavelengths over the radio at times in Sunday’s grand prix as Hamilton grew increasingly frustrated at repeated instructions he was given.

“Leave me to it, please,” was the response from an antsy Hamilton after several back and forths with Adami, who also engineered Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz during their respective stints at Ferrari.

However, despite appearing frustrated during the race, Hamilton did say that Adami “did a really good job”.

“I think Riccardo did a really good job. We’re learning about each other bit by bit,” Hamilton said.

“After this we’ll download, we’ll go through all the comments - things I said and vice versa.

“Generally, I’m not one that likes a lot of information in-race, unless I ask for it. He did his best today and we’ll move forward.”

Hamilton did however point to needing more “guidance” from the pit wall in terms of the weather, after a strategy gamble to stay out on slicks when a heavy shower hit late on backfired.

Having briefly led, Hamilton fell out of podium contention when he and Charles Leclerc were called in to switch onto intermediates too late. They finished 10th and eighth respectively.

Team principal Fred Vasseur admitted Ferrari made the “wrong decision” and would review their communications ahead of the second round in Shanghai.

"It was the first time we have to communicate between the pit wall and car, we can do a better job, it was not a clean one at all,” Vasseur said.

"We will have to learn a lot for next weekend and improve the communication. And learn what Lewis is expecting from the communication. Let's learn from today and be much better next week.”

The deficit to Charles Leclerc

Hamilton knew he would be facing a challenge going up against ‘Mr Ferrari’ Leclerc, especially over one lap.

While Hamilton is F1’s greatest ever qualifier, having racked up a record 104 pole positions, question marks have been raised about his performance over one lap after the 40-year-old Briton’s recent struggles against former Mercedes teammate George Russell.

Leclerc, regarded as one of, if not the, quickest drivers on the current grid over one lap, qualified one place and 0.218s ahead of Hamilton.

There was signs of improvement from Hamilton, who began the weekend six-tenths adrift of his younger teammate, before steadily reducing the deficit as the weekend wore on.

Overall, Hamilton was pleased with his own qualifying effort, even if he was alarmed by the whopping 0.877s gap to McLaren’s Lando Norris, who claimed pole in Melbourne.

"Charles has been in this team for seven years, he knows this car in and out. Not necessarily the new one but the general characteristics of our cars and all the tools and everything,” Hamilton said after qualifying on Saturday.

"I'm still learning those so to be that close in my first qualifying session, I'll definitely take it. We'll just get our heads down and start working trying to find out why we're not on pace with the front-runners.”

Given Albert Park is one of his best circuits, being comfortably adrift of his teammate all weekend would have acted as something of a wake-up call for Hamilton.

Hamilton will be hoping to fare better at Shanghai, where he holds the record for the most wins with six. 

Optimising the SF-25

It was a truly dreadful weekend for Ferrari, whose measly five-point haul marked their worst start to a season since 2009.

Ferrari were tipped by many as being McLaren’s nearest challengers after pre-season testing in Bahrain, so it was a real surprise to see the Scuderia struggling for pace all weekend in Melbourne.

Leclerc and Hamilton even ended up being outqualfied Racing Bulls’ Yuki Tsunoda and Alex Albon’s Williams, who Hamilton could not overtake in the race, despite the team supposedly opting for a wet-weather set-up.

The lack of pace in both qualifying and the grand prix led to suggestions that Ferrari faced ride height issues in Friday practice, and had to run a compromised set-up for the rest of the weekend in order to avoid bottoming out too much and wearing away the plank.

Vasseur indicated Ferrari had not properly optimised their SF-25 challenger for the track at Albert Park and stressed there is much more performance to come from his team.

"The conditions today are not representative of the performance. Friday to Q2 is more representative," Vasseur said. 

"As soon as you overheat the tyres you have a big drop. The real picture of the performance is more what we saw on Friday and Saturday but even then McLaren is one step ahead.

"If you don't adapt the car to the weekend to the tyres, to the track temp, you are out of the range of performance. Next weekend will be a different one."