How did Hamilton lose his advantage?

"Ferrari" driver Lewis Hamilton has only surpassed his teammate in the drivers' championship once in the last four years.

Idman.Biz reports that former "Formula 1" driver David Coulthard claims that the Briton's performance has declined. In his opinion, Hamilton has lost part of his previous advantage – approximately a "tenth and a half" (0.05 seconds) speed difference – and therefore can no longer establish his previous dominance over his teammates.

Throughout his career, especially during the turbo-hybrid era with "Mercedes", Hamilton showed a clear advantage over most of his teammates. However, in the "ground-effect" era, compared to George Russell and Charles Leclerc, the seven-time world champion has struggled to gain a consistent advantage in the internal team battle.

In particular, last season at "Ferrari", Hamilton often lagged behind Leclerc in both qualifying and races. This rarely happened during his years at "McLaren" and "Mercedes".

Although the 41-year-old driver does not hide his dislike for the previous F1 cars, even in that era he was only able to win two races in the last four years.

Coulthard said during his appearance on the "Up To Speed" podcast that the main criterion for a driver is the stopwatch.

He stated that when the time indicators are no longer the same as before, the driver realizes that he has lost his advantage. Coulthard compared this to "losing a step of speed" in football and said that he suspects Hamilton has also lost that "tenth and a half" advantage he used to have over his teammates.

According to him, in the last three years, Hamilton has not been able to consistently outperform his teammates in the dominant way he did in the previous 15 years.