Hamilton, who made the switch to Ferrari after 12 years with Mercedes, competed in his first race with his new team on Sunday (16 March), finishing in 10th place.
The first race of the new Formula One season saw Lando Norris claim first on the podium, with Max Verstappen and George Russell in second and third respectively – while there was also a late change to fourth spot after a five second penalty for Kimi Antonelli was overturned.
Perhaps the main talking point from the race at Albert Park in Melbourne was Hamilton’s heated exchange with his new colleague, engineer Riccardo Adami, with the F1 legend seemingly frustrated with the drive-ability of the new car as well as the differing weather predictions.
Lewis Hamilton finished 10th in the Australian Grand Prix (Clive Mason/Getty Images)
After the race, the 40-year-old race car driver told Sky Sports: “It was very tricky… It went a lot worse than I thought it would go, the car was really hard to drive today. I’m grateful I kept it out of the wall, that’s where it wanted to go most of the time.
“A lot to take [in], different power unit in the wet, different driving and setup on the steering wheel. And the guidance of how much more rain was coming… we missed out.
“The information I got was that it was a short shower, and real quick, and it was just the last corner. But then more came.”
And Ferrari has now made a vow to the British driver after a rather disappointing start with the Italian racing team.
Fred Vasseur (Kym Illman/Getty Images)
Fred Vasseur, Ferrari’s team principal, has said that major improvements will be made to the communication going forwards.
He said: “It’s the first race. The first time we have to communicate between the pit wall and the car. But we can do a better job, to know each other a bit better.
“It was not a great weekend for us. But let me focus on next week [China], that we’ll have to learn a lot from this weekend because we made mistakes.
“We need to improve the communication and to understand what Lewis is expecting from that communication. It’s only in these kinds of situations that we can learn and be much better next week.”
Hamilton’s new teammate, Charles Leclerc, finished ahead of him in eighth spot, in what was undoubtedly a tough start to the season for the Ferrari team.
The next race in the F1 season is the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai and will take place from 21 to 23 March, 2025.
