Lewis Hamilton advised to follow his gut instinct again after Ferrari F1 move

Lewis Hamilton should follow his gut instinct more often at Ferrari and stop over-analysing situations, according to former Formula 1 team manager Peter Windsor.

Seven-time F1 champion Hamilton has had a mixed start to life at Ferrari, with an emphatic victory in the sprint race at Shanghai being somewhat overshadowed by his disqualification from sixth place in the Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday.

The Ferrari SF-25 also hasn’t been as competitive as many had predicted after pre-season testing in Bahrain last month, with Hamilton’s teammate Charles Leclerc faring only marginally better than him in the Australian GP and the main race in China (where he was also disqualified for a separate reason).

F1 journalist Windsor feels Hamilton is as physically fit as he ever was in the sport, but believes the Briton needs to revert to an approach that he used until the 2021 season, when he engaged in a fierce scrap with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen for the title.

He has advised Ferrari’s new star signing to follow his gut again in order to perform to the best of his abilities in F1.

“I have no doubt at all that Lewis physically, apart from the obvious one or two things that happen when you age, is probably about where he was when he was 21-22,” Windsor, who briefly worked at Ferrari between 1989-90, said on his YouTube channel.

“But there is another thing that starts to happen when you start to age and that is you start to think more.

“The risk-reward question becomes a slightly bigger rational question in your mind because you are more experienced, your brain is more developed and you start naturally thinking about risk and reward and thinking about racing.

“By gut-instinct, I don't mean reflexes. What I mean is the zone that Max Verstappen gets into very quickly, when he is at the absolute limit of what the car can do. When you look from the outside the car almost looks like it is on rails because he is turning in early, he is managing all the dynamic weights.

“He is doing that not by thought, he is doing that by gut instinct. He is at one with the car and feeling the surface of the road. And that comes from not thinking about it. He thinks about other things, he thinks about strategy, he thinks about tyre management, he thinks about lots of things. But he doesn't think about what I do next, where I'm losing time, he just lets his gut instinct do it.

“Lewis is one of the very rare drivers. I would say, [Ayrton] Senna, Nigel Mansell, Lewis, and Max are four drivers in my lifetime that I've seen very closely who are able to get into that gut instinct and perfectly in harmony with the car on one lap. They don't have to think about it, it happens.

“And I got to say, now aged 40, that is not happening as much with Lewis because he is thinking more about it. He is thinking about the Ferrari politics, how to handle the engineers, the right way to speak to them, what to ask for, what not to ask for, what he wants from the car, where he is quick, where he is slow.  

Windsor reckons Ferrari holds the key to unlocking the pace Hamilton has, because producing a superior package will automatically allow the Briton to stop overthinking while he is in the car.

“It's not going to Ferrari [that is causing him to think more],” said the F1 pundit. “He is 40 years old, seven world championships. He is going to think about it more.

“It's not to do with fear, it's not to do with quick corners, slow corners - it's just analysing it more than he needs to. That's what is going on.

“If they can find a bit more traction and if they can get the Ferrari a little bit better in a couple of areas, you will see Lewis getting into that zone again and you will see Lewis start to really become the ‘gut-instinct Lewis’ that he was up to the end of 2021. I think that can still happen, I really do.

“I've said he will win grands prix, not only sprints. But right now in a difficult car in difficult conditions, it was not working for him.”