Lewis Hamilton reveals Mercedes signing as Ferrari green light major change

Lewis Hamilton revealed he has switched one of his performance engineers in his team and said they were both adapting to the mid-season alteration.

While not stating who it was, Hamilton said the engineer was from his “previous team”, suggesting the new hire came from Mercedes.

Lewis Hamilton reflects on Ferrari engineer change

Up until race day, Hamilton was enduring a torrid Belgian Grand Prix and he suggested that changes to the car plus the engineer had made it a difficult weekend.

“It’s not easy to switch engineers within the middle of the season, but it’s someone that I’ve known for years who was actually on my previous team with me but not in that position,” he told media including PlanetF1.com.

“So we’re getting used to each other and learning. Having to learn like, super, super quick and I think the changes that we had really caught both of us out, but I think we did a great job overnight, and we’ll just get stronger and stronger together.”

Those changes he referred to were an upgrade that put his Ferrari car on parity with Charles Leclerc’s and the 40-year-old said he was still acclimatising to the alterations.

“I made some changes overnight. So much in the build-up to this week, obviously, with the upgrade that we have. There’s two elements to it. One of those elements, we had it to test back in Montreal, but I didn’t end up testing it.

“Charles did and he ended up using part of it a couple of races. So he did a great job today, and he’s feeling more acclimatised. For me, as it was the first time using it, had that spin, and that caught me out.

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“We also did a change of engineers so we’re both in the deep end, basically and I think we did a really good job overnight to rectify some of those [issues]. Tweak it, fine-tune it, and the car was so much better. So I had a lot of fun trying to make my way through.”

Hamilton was also critical of the FIA’s decision to delay the race by an hour, stating they were “overreacting” to the visibility complaints made by the drivers.

“I kept shouting ‘it’s ready to go’ and they kept going around and around,” he said. “So I think they were probably overreacting from the last race where we asked them not to stop and restart the race too early because the visibility was bad. We didn’t need a rolling start.

“As soon as someone up ahead said visibility was really bad, which it wasn’t great but it wasn’t as bad as the last race, and I think they just waited, just to be sure.”

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