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Lewis Hamilton has been out-classed by Charles Leclerc during his debut year at Ferrari, and Ralf Schumacher believes his tendency not to benefit from time on the simulator has something to do with it.
The seven-time world champion has had a very difficult season during his first year in the famous red overalls of the Prancing Horse, and his results in comparison to Charles Leclerc only heighten the issues that he has faced.
Lewis Hamilton is yet to score a maiden podium after 23 race weekends in the Ferrari garages, and is in danger of recording his very first season in Formula 1 without recording at least one top-three finish in a Grand Prix.
On the other hand, Leclerc has maximised a lot more out of the SF-25, scoring seven podiums thus far and being the flag-bearer for the iconic Italian racing outfit for the entirety of the season.
At the midway point of the current campaign, it emerged that Leclerc had grown annoyed at Hamilton due to the amount of attention that the engineers in Maranello had to give the Brit as he looked to claw a way out of his ongoing rut at the team.
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Ralf Schumacher details how Lewis Hamilton ‘hardly ever’ uses the simulator at Ferrari, unlike Charles Leclerc
During a recent interview with Formel1.de on their official YouTube channel, Ralf Schumacher touched upon two issues that he thinks have been the reason for Hamilton’s inferiority to Leclerc during the Brit’s debut season with the Scuderia.
The former F1 driver explained, “He just can’t do it anymore, and I don’t think he’ll be able to do it next year either.
“And the next problem is that Lewis Hamilton is, of course, also an old-school driver who, for example, doesn’t like sitting in the simulator or hardly ever uses it.
“That’s an issue these days. If you can’t test, then you have to get involved. Apparently, he doesn’t like it or doesn’t want to do it. I have no idea why. I haven’t asked him personally.
“I’ve just heard that he doesn’t do it, while Charles Leclerc sits in the simulator every day, which is what Max Verstappen does too. That means he also has a huge advantage over him in that respect.
“And what also surprises me a little is that Toto Wolff always said that a driver with us has to drive, and the engineers will set up the car for him.
“That doesn’t suggest that Lewis Hamilton, unlike my brother, for example, or others like Max [Verstappen], has led the team somewhere, but rather that he got the car from Mercedes and drove fast.
“Of course, that doesn’t help when you urgently need the driver, like Ferrari does, to develop.”
Is Lewis Hamilton making excuses?
Toto Wolff has been trying to encourage Lewis Hamilton during his struggles at Ferrari
Having spent 12 years as the man above Hamilton within the ranks at Mercedes, Wolff shares a fairly unique relationship with the driver who brought so much success to the Silver Arrows.
The chief communications officer at Brackley, Bradley Lord, recently detailed how Wolff has privately tried to ‘encourage’ Hamilton in the hopes of him turning things around.
Rivalries aside, it’s clear that the Austrian executive wants the best for his former driver, even if it comes at a cost to Mercedes’ constructors’ championship hopes.
The words from Lord come after Wolff admitted that Hamilton looked like ‘a fish out of water’ in the Ferrari garages.
Wolff’s verdict came at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, which was arguably one of the 40-year-old’s poorest performances of the season.
Hamilton qualified last on the grid, the first time for a Ferrari driver since Giancarlo Fisichella in Abu Dhabi 2009.
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