David Coulthard has downplayed the crash suffered by Lewis Hamilton in the Ferrari Barcelona test.
And that is because – in Coulthard’s opinion – the Mercedes engine is “so embedded” in the mind of Hamilton that he was simply “caught out” in that moment.
Mercedes to Ferrari engine the trigger for Lewis Hamilton crash?
After a quick wake-up outing at Ferrari’s Fiorano test track, Hamilton got stuck into some meatier running as Ferrari held a three-day test at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, home of the Spanish Grand Prix.
However, the running was interrupted when Hamilton suffered an off at the end of the lap, Ferrari unable to repair the SF-23 quickly enough for Hamilton’s new team-mate Charles Leclerc to complete his scheduled afternoon session.
Hamilton has called time on his iconic 12-season stint with Mercedes to join Ferrari, and in a new edition of the Formula For Success podcast – after ex-F1 team boss Eddie Jordan predicted it will take Hamilton “two or three races” to properly get up to speed – Coulthard would bring up that Barcelona shunt for Hamilton.
And in the 13-time grand prix winner’s opinion, this was nothing more than Hamilton going through the process of transitioning from Mercedes power – which he has used throughout his Formula 1 career – to Ferrari.
“Much was made about his recent test in Barcelona. He had a small off there. Any small off you can call a crash,” said Coulthard.
“And I was at the Autosport Awards last night and walking the red carpet, the more tabloidy journalists that were invited to that were all going, ‘Oh, you know, what have you heard about the crash?’ You know how these things get sort of tabloid over the top.
“Going off is an occupational hazard. And it doesn’t matter if you were the late great Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher or the current Ferrari driver, Lewis Hamilton, we can all have an off at any certain point.
“And I see it as simple as this, he has to get used to the control systems in that Ferrari, the power delivery. We’re dealing with hybrid engines, so it’s not the sort of natural torque acceleration of an internal combustion engine, you know, electrical energy comes in, like that.
“And I suspect it was just, you know, he’s so embedded in his mind about the Mercedes hybrid Formula 1 engine that he was simply caught out.
“But that’s exactly why I agree with you that it’ll take a few races, because there’s a testing that a driver does where you are very consciously going through the ABCs of the braking, the turn in, the throttle application. You’re in that space because you’re developing the car and giving the feedback to the engineers.
“And then, of course, there’s racing, where you are just instinctively seeing and doing. You’re logging away what the car is doing on lap five or lap 10, or all of the good things that you need to do to continue to give the feedback, but it’s just your instinctive self when you’re in a Grand Prix. So there’s two different elements of being a race driver.”
The significance of Hamilton’s testing incident was also played down by Jordan.
There has been a great deal of scrutiny coming the way of Ferrari and Hamilton over this partnership, with Hamilton having endured a turbulent final season with Mercedes.
While he returned to winning ways with victories at Silverstone and Spa, there were concerning lows such as his “definitely not fast anymore” self-assessment after Qatar qualifying, and admission that he wanted to walk away there and then in the immediate aftermath of a disappointing Brazilian Grand Prix.
Hamilton suffered a 19-5 defeat to then Mercedes team-mate George Russell in qualifying across the F1 2024 campaign, while Russell scored 245 points to Hamilton’s 223.
“I don’t think that little off will faze him in the slightest,” Jordan predicted, “because it happens to everyone.
“Team bosses, like myself at the time, you got used to it. That’s what you have the boxes and boxes and boxes of spares for.
“And racing drivers need to push cars to the limit. If they don’t know where the limit is, they’re not going quick enough, and that’s the issue.
“I’d rather see Lewis make these smaller errors at this stage than on the race track or the qualifying track or whatever it is.
“He will be given plenty of time by Ferrari, and I think Ferrari will make and build more road cars and will have a bigger profit centre because of Lewis, so they will be able to absolutely adequately offset any outside income or expenditure that they would have had with Lewis. It will be justified.
“I’ve absolutely no doubt that it was a calculated financial, commercial decision by [Ferrari chairman John] Elkann, and I think that they will recoup that many fold.”
