Hamilton to be cautious battling Leclerc on track
Lewis Hamilton concedes he’ll take caution when fighting against Charles Leclerc on track as he’s unsure how the 21-year-old behaves in battle having never truly faced up ꦏagainst the new Ferrari driver.
While both Hamilton and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff expect Leclerc to be a title threat in his maiden year at Ferr♛ari, the reigning Formula 1 world champion says he needs to understand how the youngster both attacks and defends on track but anticipates a balanced challenger having watched him against other drivers.
Lewis Hamilton concedes he’ll take caution when fighting against Charles Leclerc on track as he’s unsure how the 21-year-old ཧbehav💞es in battle having never truly faced up against the new Ferrari driver.
While both Hamilton and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff expect Leclerc to be a title threat in his maide𝔉n year at Ferrari, the reigning Formula 1 world champion says he needs to understand how the youngster both attacks and defends on track but anticipates a balanced challenger having watched him against o🔜ther drivers.
Since Leclerc’s promotion to Ferrari the pair are yet to go head-to-head on track but Leclerc di🦋d pull off eye-catching moves on both Valtteri Bottas and his own teammate Sebastian Vettel during the Bahrain Grand Prix where a late engine issue cruelly denied him a maiden F1 win.
“I think every time you come across a new driver that you’ve had very little experience with of course you approach it with caution,” Hamilton said. “You don’t know how th🍎ey behave, you don’t know if they’re erratic, super aggressiv♏e, more relaxed, or prone to mistake.
“I’ve not had any time on track with him to assess, he looks very stable, veꦍry fair but a balanced driver as far as I can tell. Through the season you’ll see. He didn’t make any mistakes this weekend so I approach it currently the same as I approach Sebastian.
“Each driver’s a little bit different, give som💟e more space൲ than others, but at the moment I’ve not had a wheel-to-wheel battle with him. I will discover that at some stage I’m sure, hopefully we get some wheel-to-wheel battles through the year.”
Hamiltꦡon also feels developing his Mercedes F1 car to the perceived performance level of Ferrari is a bigger priority at the start of the 2019 campaign having felt thoroughly outperformed by both the Itali🍬an squad and Leclerc in Bahrain.
“We can’t be jumping around in excitement because we know, and I know, that Charles did the job this weekend and should have♕ won,” he said. “Unfortunately reliability got in the way for him.
“We all worked so hard through the weekend, as we do every weekend, but we underperform💫e𓆏d. Naturally you have lucky weekends and this is one of those.”
