Hamilton ‘definitely working hard to adjust’ to Ferrari as he sets out goal for Miami Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton has admitted that he is “definitely working hard to adjust” to the Ferrari as he enters into his sixth race weekend for the team in Miami, one in which the seven-time World Champion is aiming to replicate team mate Charles Leclerc’s success last time out in Saudi Arabia.

After the high of winning the Sprint during Round 2 in China, the past few Grands Prix have proven frustrating at times for Hamilton, having ended the triple header with two P7 results in Japan and Jeddah and a P5 in Bahrain.

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Given that he has displayed promising pace during certain stints across those events, Hamilton was asked during media day in Miami about what was preventing him from repeating that level of performance.

“Many things, lots of different things – there’s not one in particular,” the Briton responded. “When I joined Mercedes, the first six months were tough, getting attuned to working with new people.

JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA - APRIL 20: Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain driving the (44) Scuderia Ferrari — Hamilton is still adapting to the Ferrari SF-25

“Obviously the engineers that I’m working with now are used to setting up the car for a different driver and a different driver’s style, and I’m used to driving a car with a different driving style, so it’s just a combination of different things.”

Pushed on whether he felt able to drive the SF-25 instinctively yet or if it was more of a conscious process, Hamilton added: “I would say you’re generally always a mixture of the two, but I’m definitely working hard to adjust to this one, for sure.”

And when asked how long the process could take to adapt to his new car, the 105-time race winner conceded: “I really don’t know. We’re working as hard as we can to shorten that but it could be longer, who knows.”

With the Sprint making its return in Miami, Hamilton took a moment to reflect on whether this could be a positive factor for him, given his success in the first 100km dash of the season in Shanghai in which he won from P1 on the grid.

“Can’t really explain it too much,” the 40-year-old answered when quizzed on why the performance had seemingly been stronger in the Sprint than during a race.

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“In a Sprint race obviously there’s not a huge amount of changes you can make; I think the one thing to take from it is that we didn’t make a lot of changes going from P1 to Quali, as in all the other weekends we’ve been tinkering with the car and making it worse!”

Following the recent break after the triple header concluded, Hamilton revealed that he spent some “good time” at Ferrari’s base in Italy, explaining: “We went through a lot, did some good sim running, and there are things that we’ve made adjustments to. We’ll see how they work this weekend.”

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And in terms of what might be expected from himself and the team during the weekend ahead at the Miami International Autodrome, Hamilton said: “No clue – we’ll do the best we can. We’ve not got upgrades or anything this weekend but we continue to try to optimise the car.

“Obviously Charles in the last race did a fantastic job [with a P3 result] and showed what the car can do in a race, so the goal is to try to replicate that.”