Formula 1’s August break has clearly done Lewis Hamilton the power of good. No longer is he declaring himself “useless” or suggesting Ferrari needs to recruit his replacement.
It clearly hurt Hamilton quite deeply to see his Ferrari F1 team-mate Charles Leclerc qualify on pole for the pre-summer break Hungarian Grand Prix while he himself toiled and failed to qualify inside the top 10.
Hamilton races to win and although Ferrari’s plank-wear considerations and methods of dealing with that through tyre pressures and the like meant Leclerc couldn’t ultimately convert that pole position, Hungary was an opportunity lost for Hamilton.
Ferrari’s outright performance at Zandvoort is nowhere near what it was for Leclerc at the Hungaroring. In fact there are three different cars between the Ferraris and the two McLarens on the grid for Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix.
But Hamilton’s performance relative to Leclerc is much more encouraging. In Q1, Hamilton was ahead by 0.006 seconds. In Q2, Hamilton was ahead by 0.043s as the Ferraris placed fourth and fifth.
They slipped to sixth and seventh in Q3, as Isack Hadjar’s Racing Bulls and George Russell’s Mercedes inserted themselves in the space between Max Verstappen’s third-placed Red Bull and the leading Ferrari - which wasn’t Hamilton’s this time, as he lost out to Leclerc in the top-10 shootout.
But the gap again was minuscule, just 0.05s. Whichever way you slice it, this has been a much better weekend relatively speaking for Hamilton so far compared to Hungary.
So what’s made the difference?
Ferrari is remaining tight-lipped for now, having tried to play down Hamilton’s emotional outburst following his Budapest underperformance.
Hamilton too isn’t saying much, but he has revealed he’s taken a “slightly different approach” to how he’s prepared for this event, and how he’s worked with his Ferrari engineers and mechanics through the weekend so far.
He was adamant “I’m not going to go into details”, but he says his process has improved and things are “calmer”.
Reading between the lines of what he went on to say to the media after qualifying, it would seem Hamilton has tried to take a more measured approach to set-up evolution through the practices and try to work off a more consistent platform.
“There's some things I've changed on the way in[to the weekend] - which enable me to start on the right foot, a better foot,” Hamilton explained, when it was put to him by The Race that he appeared suddenly much more comfortable in the Ferrari around Zandvoort.
“Set-up changes, I think we’ve really worked well together with the engineers this weekend and it's not been up and down on changes, it's been quite stable, just made small tweaks, really really small tweaks, and therefore it's been just trying to gain more and confidence in the car and I think that's what's happened the past couple of days.
“It definitely feels like it's been one of the most solid couple days so far of the year.”
Hamilton has specifically struggled with some brake material changes Ferrari made earlier in the season and which caught him out specifically at Spa. He has again suffered some spins during practice at Zandvoort, but these seem more to do with exploring the limits of grip on a windy and tricky circuit rather than with any core discomfort he’s still feeling inside the car.
Hamilton has also spoken of challenges replicating the driving style Leclerc adopts to extract the most from the Ferrari, particularly the way Leclerc slides the rear without damaging the tyres.
When asked how much he’d taken from Leclerc’s set-up direction here, Hamilton’s reply revealed more about the measured approach he’s trying to take now, focusing more on himself than what his team-mate is doing.
“We pretty much started the same, he went a different way this morning,” Hamilton said of how their respective set-ups have evolved since Friday practice, indirectly referencing Leclerc's switch to a lower-downforce rear wing for FP3.
“I just stayed steady and stayed where I was, which I think is the right decision for me.
“I tried where he went many times through the year and it's never been positive for me.
“I'm definitely learning to extract the best from this car and realise that I'm the type that's always searching for more, like everywhere.
“It's a little bit in the tyre pressures, a little bit in the blanket temperatures, a little bit in ride height, front, rear.
“I’m looking at everything - and I think what's clear, the difference from where I was before, here you can't be looking for those.
“You have to stay put most often. And I think that's also the case with this generation of cars.”
Beyond Hamilton’s particular challenges and improved comfort with the Ferrari this weekend, there is still the yawning chasm between Ferrari and McLaren.
Ferrari undoubtedly salvaged a half decent qualifying from what Leclerc called the team’s worst Friday of the year at Zandvoort yesterday, but six-seven tenths off the pace is still “a huge amount”, as Hamilton put it.
Hamilton argues that core pace deficit has been there “all year long”, while Leclerc again suggested the particular nature of the Zandvoort track “is highlighting our weaknesses” - particularly Turns 9 and 10, which are long in their duration.
The latest floor specification in combination with the revised rear suspension introduced before the break is still clearly not enough for Ferrari to control its aerodynamic platform to the degree required.
“It's crazy how much we are losing in those two corners,” Leclerc said. “And unfortunately there's not much we can do.”
