Monza was always going to be a difficult weekend for Lewis Hamilton given the five-place grid penalty he picked up in Zandvoort, and dropping back from a decent fifth in qualifying to P10 on the grid was incredibly frustrating.
He gained spots from Kimi Antonelli and Yuki Tsunoda at the start and soon worked his way up to P6, and while George Russell was in his sights, that would be as good as it would get.
It was a solid first Monza weekend in Ferrari colours – blue rather than red for marketing reasons as it turned out – and it appeared that the progress seen at the previous race is continuing.
“I had a really good start, and I had to lift just after the start, because it was such a good start,” he said when I asked about his race. “And then I got kind of squeezed in between two cars.
“Other than that, I positioned the car really nicely, and I think made my way forwards. And I think I could have got fifth today. I think I was 1.5 seconds behind George. We should have tried to undercut them, but when we missed that opportunity, I was miles behind.”
Hamilton made it clear that he is making progress, and that the SF-25 is feeling less alien to him.
“I think this weekend built a lot on my confidence with the car,” he said. “Definitely, I’m still not 100% comfortable in the car. And I think ultimately that’s driving kind of an alien driving style with a car that I’m not 100% comfortable with.
“But I think overall, our performance was fairly decent. I think we obviously don’t have the pace of the cars much further ahead. So competing for top three is off the cards for a while, but we keep pushing, trying to extract more.”
The challenge he faces is that 16 races into the season every weekend still represents a kind of Groundhog Day reset as he had to adapt to the behaviour of the car at each venue, and forget the muscle memory that he built up over his years at Mercedes.
“I know I’ve been driving this car all year long, but in my previous years, I was a part of a car that you’re evolving over time, and you were comfortable with it,” he said.
“You know the driving style, inside and out. And I think this year, I’m arriving at the track and having to apply this new driving style that that is still alien to me. It doesn’t feel natural to a car. That’s how it likes to work.
“So through the race, I’m just getting better and better and faster and faster, and I’m unlocking in that and gaining confidence bit by bit, but that’s not there early on in the weekend to really be able to really harness it.
“If we were to do qualifying now, I think I would have been quite a bit quicker, but that’s all part of it. So hopefully next year it’s not a driving style that’s alien to me. Hopefully can go back a little bit towards what I was used to.”
With its low downforce and big braking areas Monza is a track where drivers needs that confidence, and the next venue in Baku – where there’s so little margin for error – is even more so. Hamilton agrees that it’ll be back to square one again on the Friday.
“I’m going to go there again starting at a track where I raced a different car for many years. I think the car feels better here, for example, it’s better in low speed.
“And I think the next race will be quite similar. I’ll start kind of on that back foot and build up through the weekend. I’m sure Sunday, last lap, the last race, will still be the most comfortable.”