Lewis Hamilton was just glad to keep his Ferrari on the track in tricky conditions, despite finishing in a lowly 10th place at the 2025 Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix.
In a chaotic race, Hamilton scored just a single point after the Italian squad made the wrong call during the wet-weather conditions.
The British driver mentioned on Saturday that he did not know the wet settings of his SF-25 car.
So for the majority of the Grand Prix, Hamilton trailed behind the Williams of Alex Albon as he told his new race engineer Riccardo Adami to leave him to his own devices.
A Safety Car, brought out by Fernando Alonso’s crash in the Aston Martin car, allowed most of the drivers to switch onto the dry tyres with the rain easing.
However, a heavy rain shower soon hit the circuit, and Ferrari opted to keep both cars out on track as Hamilton inherited the race lead with the leaders pitting back onto the intermediate tyres.
It turned out to be the wrong decision, as Hamilton slipped back down the order after pitting back onto the wet-weather tyres during another Safety Car.
Unable to make any further progress, his team-mate Charles Leclerc passed him as well as the recovering McLaren of Oscar Piastri, who lost second place after an off-moment at Turn 13 earlier on.
Reflecting on his Ferrari debut afterwards, however, the 40-year-old was content enough that he managed to finish the race unscathed.
“Yeah, definitely a big crash course today,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“I’m just grateful I kept it out of the wall.”
“I’m grateful I got through it, came out of it with a little bit of something, at least one point.
“Obviously I didn’t go off or spin today.
“Lacking pace, for sure, but I do believe the car has more performance than we were able to extract this weekend, and it was even less performance, for example, in the race.
“But I think it’s just settings.”
Hamilton: ‘I was in the deep, deep end today’
Getting to grips with his new car was always going to be a difficult challenge for the seven-time World Champion.
Add to that the precarious wet-weather conditions around Albert Park, Hamilton was certainly grateful just to finish the race.
But the former Mercedes driver admitted afterwards that he was still struggling with being outside of his comfort zone.
“Sometimes it’s ok, but today it felt like I was in the deep, deep end today,” he said.
“Just everything is new, from the first time I’m driving this car in the rain, the car was behaving a lot different to what I’ve experienced in the past.
“The power unit, all the steering functions, all the things that are thrown to you, you’re trying to juggle all these new things.”
Hamilton also spoke about the call from the pit wall, which ended up costing the Ferrari driver a chance at a strong points finish in his maiden race for the Scuderia.
He added: “Unfortunately, at the end they said it was just a short shower, so I was like, I’m going to hold it out, and the rest of the track was dry, so I was like, I’m going to stick it out as long as I can and keep it on the track.
“They didn’t say more was coming, and all of a sudden, more came.
“So I think it was just lacking that bit of information at the end, but I didn’t have any confidence today in it, unfortunately.
“I’m going to make some changes next week to the car, to the setup.”
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