Lewis Hamilton failed to copy ‘enormously helpful’ Michael Schumacher decision when joining Ferrari

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Lewis Hamilton will hope the end of his first season with Ferrari is more positive than his first 14 Grand Prix with the Scuderia before the summer break.

The Dutch Grand Prix offers Lewis Hamilton the chance to return to the front of the grid, even if it’s one of seven tracks he’s never won at.

This weekend represents Hamilton’s fifth visit to Zandvoort, and his first as a Ferrari driver.

Valencia is the only other track Hamilton has visited on five occasions and never won at, and it looks like he’ll be adding to that list after Sunday unless something miraculous happens.

Hamilton currently sits sixth in the drivers’ championship, 42 points behind teammate Charles Leclerc.

Team principal Fred Vasseur has admitted he underestimated Hamilton’s adaptation period, believing he would be up to speed by now.

While Hamilton knows Vasseur well, as well as his deputy team principal Jerome d’Ambrosio and technical director Loic Serra from their time at Mercedes, he’s still getting to grips with meeting thousands of new staff and learning a lot of new processes and procedures.

Commentator Alex Jacques has wondered how much better off he would be had race engineer Peter Bonnington followed him to Maranello over the winter.

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

Peter Bonnington would have been ‘enormously helpful’ to Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari

Jacques was asked on the F1 Nation Podcast how different Hamilton’s first season at Ferrari would have been if he had taken Bonnington with him, and he explained: “Yeah, I think he should have taken as many people that he trusted as possible to Ferrari.

“Purely because if you look at the history of that great team, the last person to succeed properly imported all of the staff from Benetton that he trusted and then empowered all of the talented people around him.

“Michael Schumacher was able, because Ferrari was at such a low ebb in the mid-90s, he was able to dictate terms both financially and operationally.

“And I wonder if, I mean, it might not have been possible for Lewis, but I wonder if he would do that differently.

“I think that would have been enormously helpful from the confidence side, from knowing that, OK, I’m getting everything, I know my race engineer, and I’m getting everything from that department. Where else do I need to look?

“I think Ferrari has a history of eating up a driver’s mental capacity, like we saw with Sebastian Vettel, when he was very, very stressed with the strategy throughout his time there.”

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

Why didn’t Peter Bonnington follow Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari from Mercedes?

Bonnington has racked up 92 Formula 1 wins across his career.

He was part of the Honda team that helped Jenson Button win the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix, and worked for him when he won the 2009 drivers’ championship with Brawn GP.

That team turned into Mercedes the following year, and when Hamilton crossed the line to win last year’s Belgian Grand Prix, that took his tally to 91 victories.

Jolyon Palmer said Bonnington’s relationship with Hamilton was vital to winning at Silverstone in 2024, and while he moved to Ferrari over the winter, he took up a new role as head of race engineering at Mercedes, earning his 92nd win when George Russell stood on the top step of the podium at the Canadian Grand Prix.

Hamilton had a non-poaching clause in his Mercedes contract, which meant even if Bonnington had wanted to go with him, it would have been an expensive decision for Ferrari to make.

Instead, he’s concentrated on working with Andrea Kimi Antonelli this year, while Hamilton wasn’t able to emulate Michael Schumacher’s decision to bring the likes of Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne with him to create an all-powerful Ferrari team.