Lewis Hamilton believes he's as much an engineer as F1 driver

Lewis Hamilton believes he is as much an engineer as he is an F1 driver. He also feels that engaging on the technical side of F1 helps him better communicate his feelings within the car to his team.

The Briton concedes that he may not be as smart as some of his team members, who are educated at elite universities. This experience of working with a wide range of machinery since junior formulae, however, has allowed him to work more efficiently with his team.

Speaking in a video posted on Mercedes’ social media channels, Lewis Hamilton said:

“As a driver, you’re feeling certain things out there and you need to be able to translate what you’re feeling, corner by corner, from entry to mid to exit of every single corner to your engineer and help them navigate. Since I was in Formula Renault, [I would] go out and make a change, come in, write down how that felt. And then the next time I came across that feeling I would be like, ‘Okay, this test the tool to fix that’. So yeah, over time you get that up in your memory bank, and then you can communicate with these Oxford and Cambridge students who are so intelligent. But if I can’t communicate what I’m feeling into kind of engineer jargon, then we’ll be lost.”

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Lewis Hamilton claims Ferrari are “months ahead” compared to rivals

Lewis Hamilton has piled on the Ferrari hype train following the Scuderia’s impressive pre-season testing run. The seven-time world champion claimed that the Italian team might be “months ahead” compared to the competition in terms of development.

The Briton feels his team might potentially be on the back foot compared to Ferrari and McLaren due to their focus on the championship last season. Speaking to the media on Day 1 of the Barcelona pre-season testing, he said:

“You would assume that Ferrari perhaps didn’t do much development of that car and just put everything into this year’s car. So does that mean that they’re several months ahead? Or a team is several months ahead of everyone? We’ll wait and see.”

While Mercedes and Red Bull battled it out for the championship last season, they continued to develop their 2021 cars concurrently with 2022 cars quite late into the season. Meanwhile, Ferrari were among the earliest on the grid to switch their focus entirely towards 2022, to focus on the new regulations.