‘It’s not impossible’ – Hamilton expands on key area he’s looking to work on to get to grips with Ferrari car

Lewis Hamilton has opened up on the work he has to do regarding his driving style in order to fully get to grips with the Ferrari SF-25, believing that "it's not impossible" to get a handle on.

The seven-time World Champion may have dominated headlines in China by taking his first victory with Ferrari in the weekend’s Sprint, but life away from that singular point has proven tough for Hamilton since his switch from Mercedes.

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With lower than usual finishing positions, and a disqualification from the Chinese Grand Prix, last weekend's P5 result in Bahrain marked Hamilton's best Grand Prix finish with the Scuderia.

Speaking ahead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend about the area he is targeting, he said: “My focus this weekend is driving style, really getting on top of the circuit and getting into a rhythm.

“This is a circuit, a bit like Monaco or Baku, where you have to get into a rhythm as early as possible and then just make incremental gains from there and not be overdriving.

“I’ve got a lot of work to do to adapt the way I approach corners but it’s not impossible, it might just take a little bit of time but hopefully not too long.”

Expanding on that challenge he has faced at Ferrari, he added: “I won’t want to go too much into detail but it’s just driving style. Every driver had a driving style and my driving style has worked for many years.

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“Naturally you adapt it a little bit over time but this one needs more of a drastic shift and so I found a couple of things that worked in the last race.

"Implementing that everywhere I go will be a challenge and I know that particularly when you start to...when you’re in Qualifying and you need to push to get that extra bit I can imagine myself falling straight back to my old ways so that’s something I’m just going to have to really stay patient with and diligent with, which I’m going to start from tomorrow.”

On the other side of the garage, Charles Leclerc has finished the last two Grands Prix in fourth and has been better able to extract pace from the car.

But even with his experience of Ferrari’s recent machinery, this has not come easy, with Leclerc needing to get drastic last time out in Bahrain as he went on to secure P4.

Asked about the set-up route he had gone down, Leclerc said: “I don’t want to go too much into detail. It’s just a bit trickier to drive and the car might be a bit less predictable going into a corner. As a driver, it’s not something that gives you particular confidence, but it’s something that I like – weirdly.

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“But then it’s a fine line that you’ve got to find. On a track like this, where the walls are very much there, it’s a street track and you’ve got to be fully dedicated to go into a corner and have the full confidence in the car in order to extract the maximum, you might be a bit less able to go in that direction.

“So we’ve got to find that balance. But all I can say is that it’s maybe a bit less of a predictable car and you’ve got to fight the car a lot more. But yeah, for now, I have liked this direction.”

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