The seven-time champion\u2019s star has waned since the 2022 regulation changes. At first his decline seemed pinned to Mercedes\u2019s inability to grasp the new rules, but now that his switch to Ferrari hasn\u2019t gone to plan, a harsh spotlight has its gaze trained on the 40-year-old F1 icon.<\/p>\n
It coincides with the rise of Oliver Bearman.<\/p>\n
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Bearman, 20 years old, has been a member of Ferrari\u2019s junior driver roster since 2022. He made his F1 debut for the Italian team last year, when Carlos Sainz was felled by appendicitis in Saudi Arabia, and impressed with seventh place after just one free practice session at one of the sport\u2019s most difficult tracks.<\/p>\n
A pair of erratic but fast outings with Haas later in the season sealed him into the seat with the American-owned team for this season.<\/p>\n
After a dire crash-riddled start in Melbourne and an error-prone middle of the campaign, Bearman has come good late, scoring points in four of the last five grands prix, including a career-best fourth in Mexico City.<\/p>\n
As a Ferrari-backed driver, his trajectory has him bound for Maranello eventually, assuming his form proves sustainable.<\/p>\n
But the contrast between him and Hamilton is manna from heaven for Formula 1\u2019s burgeoning hot-take industry.<\/p>\n
Enter Ralf Schumacher.<\/p>\n
PIT TALK: Lando Norris has taken a commanding 24-point championship lead after dominating the race weekend in Brazil, but the blow to Oscar Piastri\u2019s title hopes was partially inflicted by the stewards, who slapped him with a controversial 10-second penalty. Was the infringement a fair cop or over the top?<\/p>\n
\u2018LOTS OF MISTAKES, SPEED OKAY\u2019<\/p>\n
Ralf Schumacher is a six-time Formula 1 race winner and brother of the seven-time title-winning legend Michael, most of whose stratospheric records for success were broken by Hamilton in the last 10 years.<\/p>\n
Were it not for the questionable use of the safety car in Abu Dhabi in 2021, Hamilton likely would have pinched the championship record from the German icon too.<\/p>\n
Ralf Schumacher is now a pundit for Germany\u2019s Sky Sport, and on the broadcaster\u2019s Backstage Boxengasse podcast, he declared the Hamilton era over, opining that Ferrari ought to axe its big-bucks star and replace him with the English novice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Lewis Hamilton, I simply believe \u2014 you have to see it this way \u2014 that in addition to the fact that me makes many mistakes, his speed is okay but not better.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now I see this young Bearman doing amazing things with the Haas, and he costs a fraction of what Lewis Hamilton costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re talking about more than \u20ac60 million ($106.6 million) a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think that [Ferrari chairman John] Elkann can get that through anymore. That was his decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t know if he isn\u2019t like that and says, \u2018Okay, it\u2019s been a year now, Lewis Hamilton has kind of stagnated. He\u2019s come a little closer, but the money \u2026 we\u2019d rather bring in a Bearman. We have a young driver who is pushing the brand; we can build something with this rule change for the future.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWith such a high-ranking appointment, I expect more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schumacher said it was important for Ferrari to look towards the future, with Bearman representing its next generation.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing must not be forgotten: Lewis not only has the number four at the start of his [race] number [44] but also his age [40].<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I were a manager now, I would also say, \u2018Well, that\u2019s not working, so I\u2019d rather move on and develop a young, talented man like Bearman.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a searing assessment of a driver who arrived at Ferrari with considerable fanfare but who has so far failed to live up to the hype.<\/p>\n
Piastri finishes 5th after crash chaos | 03:20<\/p>\n
HOW\u2019S HAMILTON REALLY DOING?<\/p>\n
Hamilton\u2019s own assessment of the season so far is grim.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a nightmare,\u201d he told Sky Sports UK. \u201cI\u2019ve been living it for a while.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe flip between the dream of driving for this amazing team and then the nightmare of the results that we\u2019ve had, the ups and downs \u2014 it\u2019s challenging.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point I\u2019ve just got to believe that there\u2019s something to come out from all this hardship we\u2019ve been going through.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure that we\u2019re destined for something positive in future. Maybe we\u2019re getting all our bad luck out of the way this year. We won\u2019t give up, we\u2019ll be pushing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamilton and Ferrari had endured a particularly painful weekend in Brazil, where the team suffered its third scoreless grand prix of the year.<\/p>\n
He was knocked out of sprint qualifying and grand prix qualifying outside the top 10, and though a sizzling first lap in the short race got him into the points, his Sunday feature race was a disaster.<\/p>\n
He picked up damage in a collision with Carlos Sainz and then rear-ended Franco Colapinto in a punishable incident. His car was so damaged after these melees that he retired from the race.<\/p>\n
It was one of those weekends Hamilton started a step behind teammate Charles Leclerc and never caught up. Leclerc was ahead of him in every consequential session and was battling for a spot on the podium \u2014 albeit in the first handful of laps \u2014 when he was eliminated from the race as an innocent bystander in the incident between Oscar Piastri and Andrea Kimi Antonelli.<\/p>\n
But Hamilton\u2019s underwhelming performance \u2014 notwithstanding this was a particularly poor track for Ferrari \u2014 is the exception rather than the norm of an improved second half of the season.<\/p>\n
Comparing their fastest grand prix qualifying times shows a small improvement for Hamilton since the mid-season break, down from an average of 0.169 seconds adrift to just 0.107 seconds slower than Leclerc.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s of course not what Hamilton expected, but up against arguably the best qualifier on the grid and in the context of his difficulties adjusting to the car, it\u2019s respectable.<\/p>\n
His scoring rate has improved too.<\/p>\n
Though he\u2019s down 63-39 since the mid-season break, the bulk of his deficit came from his luckless Mexico City Grand Prix performance, where he\u2019d qualified third but was one of few drivers to actually use the circuit on the first lap, which perversely cost him places, including to his teammate.<\/p>\n
Ironically he was then penalised for attempting to recover ground when others weren\u2019t, leaving him a frustrated eighth while Leclerc finished second, costing the Briton 14 points relative to the sister car.<\/p>\n
Again, the picture isn\u2019t where Hamilton \u2014 or anyone \u2014 expected it to be by this stage of the season, but given the team\u2019s sporadic competitiveness and his Ferrari experience deficit to Leclerc, it\u2019s not quite the disaster it\u2019s been made out to be.<\/p>\n
Ferrari\u2019s struggles this year must also be considered. The team has been far more disappointing than Hamilton has been, and the Briton shouldn\u2019t shoulder the blame for that.<\/p>\n
Classy Piastri congratulates Norris | 00:37<\/p>\n
WHAT ABOUT BEARMAN?<\/p>\n
Good but not great shouldn\u2019t be Ferrari territory, however \u2014 even though you could label the team with the same description for most of the last 20 years.<\/p>\n
With Formula 1 having pivoted towards youth this year and with Ferrari\u2019s homegrown Bearman among the strongest performers in the crop, there\u2019s a forceful argument to be made to pick the young gun.<\/p>\n
Certainly Bearman has improved considerably this year, and his recent results have been especially impressive.<\/p>\n
His meritorious fourth in Mexico was hard-fought, him having had to defend against Max Verstappen in the first stint, both Mercedes drivers in the second stint and Oscar Piastri in the third.<\/p>\n
Verstappen got past on strategy, but Bearman successful held all the others at bay in a breakthrough performance.<\/p>\n
He was strong again in Brazil, finishing at the head of the midfield in sixth.<\/p>\n
His fourth successive scoring finish, he\u2019s seized the ascendancy at Haas from Esteban Ocon since the mid-season break, leaping ahead of the more experienced Frenchman on the title table in Mexico.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s now ahead of Ocon on every important performance metric, which is notable considering how shaky he was early in the year \u2014 he hasn\u2019t just levelled the scores, he\u2019s pulled forward enough to tip the averages in his favour.<\/p>\n
Oliver Bearman\u2019s vital statistics<\/p>\n
Qualifying result: 14 average<\/p>\n
Qualifying head to head: Bearman leads 12-8<\/p>\n
Qualifying differential: Bearman ahead 1.5 places<\/p>\n
Time differential: Bearman faster by 0.13 seconds<\/p>\n
Race result: 10.7 average<\/p>\n
Race head to head: Bearman leads 11-7<\/p>\n
Race differential: Bearman ahead 1.9 places<\/p>\n
Points: Bearman leads 40-30 (57-43 per cent)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s exactly what you\u2019d expect to see from a driver Ferrari has pegged as a future star.<\/p>\n
Piastri reacts after disastrous crash | 00:46<\/p>\n
SO IS BEARMAN A DONE DEAL?<\/p>\n
Not quite.<\/p>\n
Proponents will argue that Leclerc, around whom Ferrari has built its team for seven years now, was promoted to the Scuderia after just one season at Sauber, where he also comfortably outperformed his more experienced teammate, Marcus Ericsson, in his rookie year.<\/p>\n
The precedent is there for Bearman.<\/p>\n
But there are some major differences between their respective rookie seasons.<\/p>\n
While Leclerc also took some time to build into the year, he arrived much more quickly and much more cleanly than Bearman, whose maiden season has been pockmarked by incidents and inconsistency.<\/p>\n
The crashes are one thing \u2014 Melbourne, for example, can be put down to the immense pressure he was putting himself under on his first weekend \u2014 but some of the other driving mistakes are another.<\/p>\n
He has two red flag infringements this year, which have rightly piled penalty points onto his licence.<\/p>\n
One of them was for a crash in pit lane in Silverstone \u2014 absolutely unnecessary, and the attached 10-place grid penalty totally undid what ended up being only the second top-10 qualifying appearance of his year.<\/p>\n
Red flag infringements of this nature cannot be written off as rookie errors.<\/p>\n
And even after that tremendous weekend in Mexico, he was pinged for erratic driving while battling Liam Lawson down the straight in the Sao Paulo sprint, earning him a post-race time penalty and another penalty point.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s now only three penalty points away from a race ban. All his penalty points were accumulated this season; he won\u2019t get any back until next May.<\/p>\n
None of this should write him off as a future star, and he\u2019s clearly already ironing out some of his deficiencies, but Ferrari has the luxury of allowing him to do that away from the spotlight at a smaller team. There\u2019s no need to rush his progress.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also not the right time to dispense with Hamilton.<\/p>\n
Him joining the team was always aimed at success from 2026 onwards under the new rules. The Briton clearly doesn\u2019t gel with this generation of car, but with his input on board, Ferrari\u2019s 2026 challenger can be closer to what he needs to get the best from himself.<\/p>\n
He also brings value off the track, where he decade of experience with Mercedes at the peak of its powers can bring Ferrari the final percentage points of performance it needs to finally close the gap at the top of the championship standings \u2014 assuming it takes any of his advice on board.<\/p>\n
His contract reflects all of this, with paddock speculation suggesting it\u2019s a three-year deal, taking him to the end of 2027.<\/p>\n
Hamilton himself described it as \u201ca pretty long contract\u201d in Brazil.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s still more to the Hamilton story at Ferrari, and Bearman has more to prove before he earns elevation to the senior team.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s no doubt their trajectories are destined to cross. It\u2019s just a matter of the circumstances in which they do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s no-one who doesn\u2019t have an opinion on Lewis Hamilton. Having spent most of the last decade winning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[944,2620,2095,12295,1724,64,63,689,11308,163485,24562,163477,4971,2791,36339,13275,163483,14210,163484,163478,2057,163471,817,59959,163480,813,816,5717,18901,14211,81100,142598,163488,159163,159170,5585,1737,823,163489,825,647,2184,13756,2041,677,5242,49517,163472,163479,2119,163476,163475,22297,163474,163487,13777,90135,14217,14218,21786,43359,30966,51048,16193,163481,163490,38794,25598,14640,163482,101235,32654,22305,163486,11298,85,163473,14219,31303,43367,55620,660,14228,12000,2062,75918],"class_list":["post-283120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-abu-dhabi","tag-agence-france-presse","tag-america","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-asia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-brazil","tag-breakthrough-performance","tag-british-driver","tag-carl-de-souza","tag-carlos-sainz","tag-central-america","tag-championship-standings","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-decade-winning-races","tag-driver-market","tag-driving-mistakes","tag-erratic-driving","tag-europe","tag-experience-deficit","tag-f1","tag-feature-race","tag-final-percentage-points","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-germany","tag-grand-prix-qualifying","tag-grands-prix","tag-grid-penalty","tag-hermanos-rodriguez","tag-highest-pressure-team","tag-horror-blow","tag-horror-race","tag-john","tag-lando-norris","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-maiden-season","tag-max-verstappen","tag-melbourne","tag-mexico","tag-mid-season-break","tag-north-america","tag-oceania","tag-oliver-bearman","tag-paddock-speculation","tag-penalty-points","tag-performance-metric","tag-pit-talk","tag-points-relative","tag-post-race-time-penalty","tag-practice-session","tag-prix-qualifying-times","tag-qualifying-appearance","tag-qualifying-session","tag-race-ban","tag-race-differential","tag-race-result","tag-race-weekend","tag-race-winner","tag-ralf-schumacher","tag-red-flag-infringements","tag-regulation-changes","tag-respective-rookie-seasons","tag-rookie-errors","tag-rule-change","tag-safety-car","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-scoreless-grand-prix","tag-scoring-rate","tag-senior-team","tag-seven-time-champion","tag-seven-time-title-winning-legend","tag-south-america","tag-sports","tag-successive-scoring-finish","tag-time-differential","tag-title-hopes","tag-title-table","tag-ups-and-downs","tag-victoria","tag-vital-statistics","tag-western-asia","tag-western-europe","tag-young-driver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}