Hamilton, first impressions on the new cars Lewis Hamilton’s first day in official testing in Bahrain ended with a gap of exactly one second from Max Verstappen. A gap that worries the fans more than Ferrari: for the moment the Scuderia from Maranello wants to accumulate data and observe the behavior of the SF-26, before looking more specifically at the performance in the second part of the tests. The seven-time world champion, commenting on his day-1, seemed critical of the new generation of cars, but it is likely that – at least in part – his negative feelings on the SF-26 were influenced by the strong wind. Hamilton’s words “It’s very windy here, it’s much hotter than in Barcelona and it’s much more difficult to find the right balance, but I think everyone is having difficulty. The car is shorter, lighter, it’s actually easier to control. It’s more fun to drive, it feels like being in a rally”, this is Hamilton’s comment in reference to the instability of the rear. “It really seems to me that we are slower than a GP2.” In reality, the F2s set a pole time of 1’44” in Bahrain, ten seconds slower than the best time on day 1 of the F1 test. Hamilton’s main concerns concern energy management: “In Barcelona you do 600 meters of lift and coast in a qualifying lap. This is not the spirit of racing. None of the fans will understand these procedures, they are ridiculously complex. The other day they explained it to me in seven meetings, it’s as if you needed a degree to understand it completely.”
