Karun Chandhok believes Lewis Hamilton is entering a “critical” period of the season after a disappointing start to life at Ferrari.
Aside from his sprint victory in China, seven-time world champion Hamilton has not finished in the top three. His best grand prix result came in Imola last month, where he finished fourth, and he came home an underwhelming sixth last time out in Spain.
In contrast, Hamilton’s teammate Charles Leclerc has finished on the podium in the last two races and is 23 points ahead of the Brit going into round 10 in Canada this weekend.
Ex-F1 driver Chandhok, who works as a pundit for Sky Sports, believes Hamilton’s team of engineers should be “concerned” and changing the set-up of the temperamental SF-25 car.
“It’s starting to get a bit critical,” Chandhok said, on the latest episode of the Sky Sports F1 podcast. “We’re coming into the second third of the season now, and he’s not finding the rhythm.
“He’s not finding consistency where week in, week out, he’s in a happy place of the car. In Imola, he was woeful in qualifying, then suddenly the car’s brilliant in the race. In Monaco, he wasn’t quite there. He was a chunk behind Charles throughout.
“There’s got to be a degree of concern creeping in. When you look at Spain, the fact that Charles overtook him and drove away from him quite comfortably, even before we go into the different tyres and stuff later on.
“If I was on the Lewis side of the garage, I would be concerned. We are nearly at halfway through the year now, we need to start understanding whether this a fundamental issue, that we need to change the direction of the set-up of the car.”
Despite his struggles, Chandhok believes the 40-year-old still has what it takes to win races, if given the machinery to do so.
“I’m not disputing that he’s still got the ability… he clearly does,” he added. “He’s able to win races, we saw that in China, but they need to find a sweet spot for him, where every weekend he knows what he’s got, and they haven’t got that.
“He’s still having too many good days and bad days. The fluctuations are too much.”
Hamilton will be eyeing his first podium of the year this weekend in Montreal, where he claimed his first F1 victory back in 2007.
