David Coulthard questions if Lewis Hamilton has lost decisive edge
Has Lewis Hamilton lost his advantage over his teammates?
David Coulthard has questioned whether Lewis Hamilton has lost the “half a tenth” that once made him untouchable against his teammates.
This year’s championship marks 41-year-old Hamilton’s 20th season on the Formula 1 grid with the seven-time world champion chasing an unprecedented eighth title to break his tie with Ferrari legend Michael Schumacher.
David Coulthard questions whether Lewis Hamilton has lost his edge
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The Briton last won the title in 2020 before he was overthrown by Max Verstappen. The Red Bull driver went on to dominate in the ground-effect aerodynamic era, winning three further titles on the trot before Lando Norris secured the 2025 title.
As for Hamilton, he struggled with the ground-effect cars, securing just two grand prix wins in four years. Last season – his first with Ferrari after 12 years at Mercedes – he didn’t just go winless; he failed to secure a podium.
It meant that for the second year running, he lost the head-to-head battle against his teammate – first George Russell and then Charles Leclerc.
Coulthard has pondered whether Hamilton, who also didn’t get a pole in those two seasons, has maybe lost a bit of the edge that he used to have over his teammates.
Equating Hamilton’s situation to his own in 2008 when, at 37, he decided it was time to hang up his helmet, the Scot explained on the Up To Speed podcast: “When the stopwatch stopped talking to me and the lap times weren’t there anymore. I realised you just lose that edge.
“I think in footballing terms, losing a yard or something is the expression that you just can’t get on the ball anymore.
“So, I just wonder whether Lewis has lost that little half a tenth that he had over all his teammates in the past because in the last three years, he hasn’t dominated his teammates in the way he did in the previous 15 years.”
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But has Coulthard pinpointed one of the key issues in, at least, Hamilton’s Ferrari struggles?
Hamilton joined Ferrari after 12 years with Mercedes where he worked with several key figures in his race engineer Peter Bonnington and his physio Angela Cullen.
But while Cullen, who parted ways with the Briton to work in IndyCar, returned to Hamilton’s side as he joined Ferrari, the seven-time champ had to say goodbye to Bono.
His relationship with his first Ferrari engineer, Riccardo Adami, ended after one season with Ferrari moving Adami to a new role after the partnership failed to gel. Hamilton will now work with Carlo Santi for the first few races of this season before a new engineer, rumoured to be Cedric Michel-Grosjean, steps into the role.
Coulthard said: “He may have brought Angela back; she’d gone away towards the end of his Mercedes career. So he had, let’s say, someone around him that was a sort of touch point to make him feel comfortable. But every time I left a team, I took an engineer with me.
“They’re your data bank of knowledge. The relationship with your engineer is the most important in the team, because that’s the person who fights your corner in terms of new parts coming into the team.
“That’s the person who gives you all the information when you’re out on track to define what your strategy is going to be.
“The strategist can tell you, pit now, but if the driver doesn’t come in, you’re not pitting now. So it’s so important, arguably more important than the relationship you have with your partner.”
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