Autobayng News Team
Halfway through his first season as a Ferrari driver, Lewis Hamilton is close to matching his team mate’s championship tally, with 103 points to Charles Leclerc’s 119.
But that doesn’t do justice to their performances over the dozen rounds to date. While Hamilton has played his way in with the Ferrari, making gradual if not linear progress, Leclerc has often impressed with how much he can extract from a car which is plainly not the equal of the race-winning machine he enjoyed at the end of last year.
Hamilton fans would have been forgiven for getting excited by the early signs from his first team move for 12 years. He briefly led in Melbourne, but that was the result of a rather optimistic strategy in a rain-hit race, and he won the sprint race in China. But 24 hours later the team came crashing down to earth as both cars were disqualified for separate technical infringements in the grand prix.
Leclerc has been dissatisfied with his qualifying performances this year, but Hamilton fell well short of his lap times over the opening races. Since then he has made measurable gains. Hamilton started ahead of his team mate at three of the last four rounds, though at the first of those Leclerc chose to tactically compromise his qualifying performance to have a better stock of fresh tyres for the race, which paid off.
While Hamilton has been finding his feet, Leclerc has made hay, pulling off some truly impressive drives. His performance in Jeddah, Monaco and Catalunya were especially impressive, though the less said about last time out at Silverstone the better.
Throughout the season so far Hamilton has been at pains to point out how alien and unfamiliar the SF-25 feels to him. He has explored various set-up permutations and gradually moved towards Leclerc’s way of driving the car.
As he has done that, the gap between the pair has shrunk. This has been most noticeable in qualifying, but the stream of driving instructions from Ricardo Adami during the grands prix are clearly getting through to Hamilton as well.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
The Ferrari drivers have already had a few minor skirmishes over strategic clashes earlier this year, notably at Shanghai and Catalunya. Given Hamilton’s current rate of progress, we could well see more of those in the second half of the season. However Ferrari cannot have expected anything else when they chose to pair two drivers of this calibre.
Hamilton vs Leclerc: Summary
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Hamilton vs Leclerc: Race-by-race
| AUS | CHI | JAP | BAH | SAU | MIA | EMI | MON | SPA | CAN | AUT | GBR | ||
| Hamilton | Q |  |  | | | | | | | | | | |
| R | |  | | | | | | | | | | |
Hamilton vs Leclerc: One-lap pace
Unrepresentative comparisons omitted. Negative value: Hamilton was faster; Positive value: Leclerc was faster
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Formula 1
- F1’s most unrepresentative scoreline? Alonso trails Stroll at halfway stage
- Hadjar leads the way as Lawson comes to terms with demotion back to ‘Red Bull 2’
- Is Norris back on par with Piastri in F1’s first team mate title fight for nine years?
- It’s advantage Albon so far at resurgent Williams as Sainz needs a change in luck
- Toyota’s Tsuboi and Hirakawa to drive Haas F1 car in public test at Fuji
