Hamilton: I find myself at my beginnings when I see Leclerc

Promoted to Ferrari this season, Leclerc is already competing with his new teammate Sebastian Vettel but the Team showed in China that it continued to favor the German at the start of the season, as it had initially planned to do. 

The situation is reminiscent of that ofHamilton in his early days at McLaren in 2007. Faced with Fernando Alonso, then double title holder, the future five-time world champion wasted no time in giving Ron Dennis big headaches by evolving at the same pace as the Spaniard.

Asked in Baku whether he saw any similarities between the two situations, Hamilton replied: “ Absolutely. I remember that I wanted to arrive in F1 as quickly as possible and when I got there, I wanted to win straight away by beating the champion at the time. 

It's a very similar situation today. I find a lot of myself in Charles. He's doing a great job so far, he's driving so well and we know how huge the expectations are at Ferrari. He just has to keep doing his thing. Success will come naturally ». 

Hamilton's emergence did not go smoothly at McLaren, the Woking team ending up self-destructing even though it undoubtedly had better equipment than Ferrari in 2007. The first signs of tension were This was evident in Monaco where the bulky English rookie claimed that he was faster than Alonso but had to stay behind on instructions from the team. 

« My philosophy as a driver is: I want to be given the same opportunities as everyone else, added Hamilton while reconsidering the events 12 years later. In some teams, multiple world champions want to enjoy a privileged status. Suddenly, their teammate finds himself de facto number 2 driver. This kind of thing goes against my competitive DNA. That's why I understand what Charles can feel. He thinks he is the best driver or at least believes he has the potential to become one.

You are a bit rebellious in these cases. You are told to do something but you want to go in the opposite direction. I have already experienced this type of situation. At the time, I was lucky enough to be with a team that agreed to give us the same amount of fuel in the car in qualifying the following race and I won my first career Grand Prix. (Canada 2007, Editor’s note). This result justified my rebellion two weeks ago ». 

When asked if Maranello was right to favor Vettel in their fight against Mercedes, Hamilton concluded with a greedy smile: “ It's their decision, not mine. For me, I fight against the two Ferraris ". If the Scuderia drivers are stealing points, the leader of the world championship is not going to be choosy either.