Lewis Hamilton<\/a> sixth in the standings at the end of his worst season in F1.<\/p>\nHis form in the Ferrari drew plenty of criticism, with his long-term future in F1 being called into question.<\/p>\n
Hamilton is \u201cnot going to give up\u201d<\/p>\n
Jock Clear, who served as Hamilton\u2019s performance engineer at Mercedes, has defended the seven-time champion, offering a reminder that Schumacher didn\u2019t win a title with Ferrari until the fifth year of his tenure.<\/p>\n
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
“I remind people that when Michael [Schumacher] went to Ferrari, it took the team five years before he won anything,\u201d he said in an interview provided by CasinoHawks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn’t happen overnight, and I said to a few people, sort of middle of the season, I know Lewis [Hamilton] really had a tough time last year dealing with how difficult the challenge was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schumacher did win three times in his first Ferrari season in 1996 and was a championship threat from the 1997 campaign.<\/p>\n
Clear added: \u201dIt’s reassuring to remind people how difficult F1 is.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Lewis arrived and just won an eighth championship, it sort of demeans or belittles the sport somewhat.<\/p>\n
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look at Carlos [Sainz] at Williams, after five races, people were like ‘oh, what’s happened? I thought he was going to blow Alex Albon away’.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at him by the end of the year. It doesn’t happen overnight.<\/p>\n
“I think part of that frustration for Lewis is probably that he knows that.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, coming back to the spotlight that Ferrari was under. So, he just needs time. Lewis is not going to give up just because 2025 was tough.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe foresaw it being very tough. Hamilton will come back stronger and harder next year, work on the development, and do everything he can do to see the project through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ex-Lewis Hamilton engineer Jock Clear has defended the Briton following his tough Ferrari Formula 1 debut by serving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,826,813,816,823,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-399954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-ferrari","12":"tag-formula-1","13":"tag-formula1","14":"tag-lewis-hamilton","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399954","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=399954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}