Hamilton ‘not fast enough’ with ‘terrible’ Ferrari issue highlighted

Ten races into his first season at Ferrari and without a single podium, Robert Doornbos has joked he feels for Lewis Hamilton as he knows what it is like to go that long without a champagne moment.

But jokes aside, the former Formula 1 driver isn’t seeing a reason to be optimistic about what comes next for Hamilton and the Scuderia.

Robert Doornbos says he ‘feels’ for Lewis Hamilton

Nearing the halfway mark in his first season as a Ferrari driver, Hamilton has a lights-to-flag Sprint win to his name, but that’s the total sum of his success.

The seven-time World Champion has yet to fight for a grand prix victory, with his best Sunday result a P4 at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix where he was two seconds off the podium.

His results have left him down in sixth place in the Drivers’ Championship, 119 points down on championship leader Oscar Piastri.

Should the Briton lose a position on the log, he’ll match last year’s P7 with Mercedes, which was his worst finishing position ever in Formula 1.

But while he is not there yet, his current run of 10 races without a top-three result is his longest-ever stint away from the Formula 1 podium.

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“I see a Lewis Hamilton who hasn’t taken a podium in ten races in Formula 1. That has never happened in his career,” Doornbos, who contested eight races with Minardi and three with Red Bull, told Ziggo Sport.

“I know how it feels,” he joked, “I had 11 races and didn’t take a podium either. I feel for that boy.

“I secretly hoped that there was a glimmer of hope that he could become champion at Ferrari. That he would be given the tools and would bend the team to his will.

“They really have changed a lot in that team and it’s still dramatic.”

Doornbos believes Ferrari’s problems are partially down to the nationality of the people within the team as in their last period of success, the Michael Schumacher era, there are several key Englishmen at the helm, including Ross Brawn.

Now they have one key Englishman, Hamilton, and he’s “not fast enough” to get the job done.

“It’s difficult to put your finger on it, but if you look at the past, where all those successes come from, then it was almost an English organisation that operated from Italy,” he said.

“Now you have a Frenchman in charge, who in Italy operates with a Monegasque driver and an Englishman with a lot of baggage, who doesn’t get the credit he deserves.

“On the other hand, he is not fast enough either, you could say.”

The pre-season hype has long since faded and Doornbos reckons the problems are mounting, not least Hamilton’s terse communication with his race engineer Riccardo Admai.

“A great start,” declared Doornbos. “The media, the value of the company went up. Everybody loved it, right?

“But then the performance comes – or the performance doesn’t come.

“The communication with his engineer is terrible. It’s like in any marriage, you can have your ups and downs, but there’s no up.

“It was only down.”

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