Carlos Sainz shares his honest opinion on Lewis Hamilton's underwhelming start to life at Ferrari

Carlos Sainz feels Lewis Hamilton's struggles to adapt to Ferrari was expected, especially as he had spent more than a decade at Mercedes. The seven-time F1 champion surprised the world when he announced his move to the Italian team.

His start to life at Ferrari hasn't been as good. If we compare Lewis Hamilton to his teammate Charles Leclerc, the younger driver has been very dominant. If we just look at the Grand Prix sections of the race weekend, the head-to-head in both races and qualifying is 6-1 in favour of Leclerc. The last couple of races in Miami and Imola saw Lewis Hamilton close the gap a bit to Leclerc, but the gap remains.

Sainz was questioned if he was surprised to see Hamilton have such a gap and struggle to perform at Leclerc's level. Pointing out how it takes time to adapt to a new system with a different team and car, the adaptation period is always going to be there, something not only Hamilton but he also had to go through at Williams. Sainz told the media, including Sportskeeda,

“I think the struggles are real for him, and real for me, and real for Nico Hulkenberg. They are real for any rookie coming into a team, although while a rookie has less experience, but also less muscle memory of other cars that he has recently driven, they are coming with a clean sheet."

He added:

“We have muscle memory of 24 races of three or four consecutive years of driving a different car so everything feels weird. Going back to Lewis, it’s completely normal the adaptation process.

"He’s been 10 years (12) with the same team, so I think everything would feel completely odd and off to him in the Ferrari. In the same way for me in the Williams, the first races, I was completely lost in a lot of things."

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Unfair to jump to conclusions about Lewis Hamilton after just seven races

Carlos Sainz too had a period of adaptation at Willaims where he was clearly a step behind Alex Albon.

That process is now seemingly completed, and the driver appears to be more aligned with the car. He does, however, feels that criticism levied at Lewis Hamilton is unfair, as the Briton has been a part of the team for only seven races:

“The only thing we can do as drivers is try to make that adaptation process as short as possible, but the process an the races are always going to be where you take some time to adapt. You can judge how long or short that can take a driver but to judge the driver’s career in that team with six or seven races - it’s unfair."

Sainz added:

“You can probably just judge how long or how short a driver takes to adapt to a team, but we need to wait years to see how it goes for me in Williams, how it goes for him, how it goes for Nico at Sauber/Audi. Only time will tell.”

Lewis Hamilton's last two races have been quite positive in terms of how close he has gotten to Leclerc in terms of performance. The progress is there, so he will hope to take the next step soon.