Lewis Hamilton disputes ground effect struggles amid renewed F1 form

Lewis Hamilton has countered the overarching opinion that he failed to get to grips with the ground-effect era Formula 1 machinery, pointing out that his results were still superior to most other drivers.

Hamilton was the dominant force in F1 from 2014 to the end of the decade, with his streak of six titles in seven years coming to a controversial end in 2021 as Red Bull and Max Verstappen took the mantle.

While Hamilton's return for 2022 was far from certain, when he did return to the cockpit, his results were noticeably down on previous years. While some of this could have been put down to a hangover from his championship battle, the majority of the problems were on the part of Mercedes, with a unique zero sidepod configuration failing to produce the downforce levels indicated in the wind tunnel.

But even as Mercedes improved, Hamilton was unable to find consistent form. When he eventually moved to Ferrari, he was comfortably beaten by new team-mate Charles Leclerc, who scored seven podiums while the Briton went without silverware.

But this year, the picture has changed, with Hamilton now leading the Ferrari charge in lighter, more nimble cars. 

"I can drive it a little bit more like the previous generation of cars," Hamilton said. 

"The races that I won in the previous generation of car, I drove exactly the same as I do today. So, there's all this talk of how that generation of car didn't suit me, [but I] still won more races than most, probably, in that period of time. 

"But the cars today are just a little bit easier, more forgiving, and they're lighter. They haven't got bouncing. The throttle, the power application takes a lot of work, and tuning through that with, it's just another element you have to do with the engineers.

"Before it was just about drivability, whereas today drivability is where they're deploying, and you're changing that all the time, and understanding that you can actually have an effect by going half-throttle, off-throttle, on-throttle, 10% off, that changes the deployment through the lap, so understanding that is even more crucial than it was before."