Hamilton a 'second Norris'? 'He's losing his credibility'

The first months of Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari have not been going well, to put it mildly. The Brit had hoped to challenge for the world title whilst racing for the Italians' colours, but instead, he's walking around disheartened, observes Jacques Villeneuve.

"You can hear that Lewis Hamilton is not happy at all," the Canadian says in conversation with a betting website. “Charles Leclerc has been stepping up more and more. And you can hear it in Lewis’s comments, ‘I’m sorry’. It’s like Norris, once you start doing this, you’re burnt.”

According to Villeneuve, that's not the image Hamilton should be projecting at a volatile team like Ferrari. “Ferrari is like a volcano. You need fireworks. You need passion, the spark to ignite things. If you don't have that spark, that's a problem at Ferrari. Time is short.”

Villeneuve thinks Hamilton is finding out the hard way that Ferrari is not Mercedes: “At Mercedes, he was allowed to take his time. Not Ferrari. You need to be up there and bang. The sprint race in China seemed to be the spark. But no fire came out after that,” says the former Formula 1 champion.

Villeneuve offers Hamilton a piece of advice: Don't think you're really good. “That’s not how it works at Ferrari. And it’s really odd. The key point is how it will be once they all get back to Europe. They haven’t had time to take a breather.”