{"id":217925,"date":"2025-06-27T06:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T06:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/217925\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T06:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T06:34:09","slug":"lewis-hamilton-told-not-rocket-science-as-bottas-issues-damning-ferrari-verdict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/217925\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton told &#8216;not rocket science&#8217; as Bottas issues damning Ferrari verdict"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Valtteri Bottas says it is \u201cnot rocket science\u201d to adapt from Mercedes to Ferrari machinery despite Lewis Hamilton\u2019s struggles in F1 2025.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Hamilton made only the second team switch of his illustrious career when he swapped Mercedes for Ferrari at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Lewis Hamilton\u2019s Mercedes muscle memory at root of Ferrari F1 2025 woes?<\/p>\n<p>Yet despite enjoying success in the sprint format, winning the mini race from pole position in China and finishing third in Miami, the seven-time World Champion has largely struggled so far this season, lagging behind team-mate Charles Leclerc on pace.<\/p>\n<p>Having been powered by Mercedes engines throughout his F1 career, the vagaries of the Ferrari power unit have been cited as a potential factor behind his woes.<\/p>\n<p>Hamilton is also understood to have struggled with Ferrari\u2019s Brembo brakes, having grown accustomed to using braking materials provided by rival brand Carbon Industrie across his 12 seasons with Mercedes.<\/p>\n<p>Lewis Hamilton vs Charles Leclerc: Ferrari head-to-head scores for F1 2025<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc49\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetf1.com\/news\/f1-2025-qualifying-head-to-head-team-mates\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc49\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetf1.com\/news\/f1-2025-race-head-to-head-team-mates\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Bottas spent five years as Hamilton\u2019s Mercedes team-mate between 2017 and 2021, helping the British driver to four consecutive Drivers\u2019 titles.<\/p>\n<p>The Finnish driver swapped Mercedes for Ferrari power at the start of 2022 when he joined long-serving Ferrari customers Sauber (then competing as Alfa Romeo).<\/p>\n<p>Appearing on the Red Flags podcast, Bottas downplayed the challenge of adjusting from Mercedes to Ferrari machinery, revealing that he found the change \u201cquite straightforward.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yet he cautioned that the big rule changes for 2022, which saw F1 revert to ground-effect cars, potentially eased his adaptation compared to Hamilton, who has made the move to Ferrari during an existing rules cycle.<\/p>\n<p>Bottas said: \u201cFor sure, there\u2019s things to learn, things to get used to.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd especially if you are with a team-mate that has got used to all that, he will have the upper hand initially, but racing drivers always need to be adaptive.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou need to be able to adapt to a new car. Pretty much every year there\u2019s a new car anyway \u2013 power units will change and so on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo it\u2019s nothing unusual in F1 that you\u2019re always adapting, always learning because this sport just keeps developing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I know what he\u2019s probably been going through and for me, personally, it was quite straightforward.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut we must remember that at that time when I joined Alfa Romeo, there was the big regulation change so there were many new things anyway already.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More on Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari from PlanetF1.com<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc49 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetf1.com\/driver\/lewis-hamilton\/news\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lewis Hamilton news<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc49 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetf1.com\/team\/ferrari\/news\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ferrari news<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Asked specifically about the differences between the Mercedes and Ferrari engines, Bottas explained: \u201cThe driveability is a bit different. How the power comes, especially at the lower revs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut which one is better? It\u2019s difficult to say.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe settings, the power harvesting, power deployment, you\u2019ve got different strategies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey call them differently, so you need to learn how to use that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven the harvesting, the braking can be a bit different because of that. [The sound] can be different, but that doesn\u2019t really make a big difference.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s it really. It\u2019s not rocket science.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the challenge of moving from Carbon Industrie to Brembo brakes, he added: \u201cFor me, it didn\u2019t make a difference.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously, Mercedes uses CI. Sauber used Brembo, which is what Ferrari used.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe only small difference for me was how the brakes warm up. Another brand warms up quicker, but for me the behaviour was same same.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read next:\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetf1.com\/news\/sky-f1-ted-kravitz-simon-lazenby-book-announcement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ted Kravitz lands new role ahead of Austrian Grand Prix with Sky F1 clash on the cards<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Valtteri Bottas says it is \u201cnot rocket science\u201d to adapt from Mercedes to Ferrari machinery despite Lewis Hamilton\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,997,707,4200,225,998,4859,12,79,16,15,54511],"class_list":{"0":"post-217925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-ferrari","10":"tag-formula-1","11":"tag-formula1","12":"tag-home-page","13":"tag-lewis-hamilton","14":"tag-mercedes","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-valtteri-bottas"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114753940178105906","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}