Anthony Davidson tells Ferrari they’re missing something ‘brilliant’ Lewis Hamilton had at Mercedes

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Anthony Davidson has made an interesting comparison between Lewis Hamilton’s first season at Ferrari and his time at Mercedes.

Lewis Hamilton’s record of winning six championships with Mercedes looks safe for now, unless Red Bull and Max Verstappen get a march on their rivals during the upcoming regulation changes.

He beat Michael Schumacher’s record with Ferrari in 2020, but is now pursuing his first title with the Scuderia.

Is a lack of confidence the REAL reason why Lewis Hamilton has struggled at Ferrari?

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Based on what happened last season, Fred Vasseur’s team need to make some huge steps forward over the winter break to make that happen.

Ferrari insiders are worried Hamilton is still ‘chasing’ what he had at Mercedes, but Anthony Davidson seems to agree with the 41-year-old’s approach.

He thinks that not having Peter Bonnington as his race engineer isn’t helping, even if Ferrari are potentially lining up Luca Diella to take on the role ahead of next season.

READ MORE: Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton’s life outside F1 from net worth to family

Anthony Davidson thinks Lewis Hamilton is missing ‘brilliant’ Peter Bonnington’s influence at Ferrari

Davidson was speaking on The F1 Show Podcast about what needs to change at Ferrari for Hamilton to succeed next year.

He said: “I can’t believe it all boils down to just the race engineer, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

“Things need to change. The race engineer changing is one of many that hopefully will bring Lewis more performance.

“And this is a team game. It’s the ultimate team game, and when you have over one and a half thousand employees working away back at base to make the best car they possibly can and to run it in the best possible way.

“You need everyone to be communicating together, and I feel like that was missing for Lewis, and he’s a vocal driver. He needs to believe that everyone’s on his side.

“When we heard these painful messages, I always thought back to that brilliant relationship obviously that he had with Bono at Mercedes.

“And you go, would he have ever asked that question to Bono, or would Bono have ever replied in such a way? Of course not.

“It must have been quite a lonely time for him in many ways last year. I felt really sorry for him. So hopefully things can turn around, and he can start to build that team around him because if you’re going to listen to one person on the grid of all the drivers, you would listen to Lewis Hamilton in how to build a successful team and how to operate it.

“You’d hang off his every word.”

READ MORE: All you need to know about Scuderia Ferrari from team principal to factory

David Croft shares what he’s hearing about Lewis Hamilton’s new race engineer

Ferrari won’t have Hamilton’s new race engineer in place for pre-season testing in Barcelona, with Bryan Bozzi set to take on the role for both of the team’s drivers.

It’s far from ideal for Hamilton, who would likely much prefer to start building up that relationship immediately, with only nine days of testing before the opening race of the season in Australia.

Speaking to Davidson, David Croft provided some more details on who could be replacing Riccardo Adami.

He explained: “That wasn’t a relationship that was going anywhere in a positive way.

“It’s difficult, isn’t it? You throw people together, and you hope that it works, and good companies, good managers find a way to integrate new people into teams, and bad managers find a way not to integrate people properly and sadly, in this respect, it didn’t work out.

“But this heaps the pressure on Lewis. It really does. Now he is more than good enough to cope with that pressure. more than good enough to come through, and I hope [he] will feel comforted by the fact that he will have an engineer that he has a better relationship with.

“And I’m pretty certain I think that there is someone already at Ferrari that will step into a new role and move up, and that Lewis will have known from years before, but nothing’s been announced yet.”