Carlos Sainz offers stern Lewis Hamilton Ferrari struggles defence: 'It's unfair'

Carlos Sainz has defended Lewis Hamilton during his early Ferrari, insisting that any criticism is over his struggles is "unfair". 

Hamilton has endured a challenging start to life at the Maranello-based outfit as he adjusts to life at the team following a lengthy stint at Mercedes.

Pace over a single lap has been a problem for the seven-time world champion, although he has shown promising race pace at times. 

His Ferrari highlights so far are converting sprint pole into sprint victory in China and his recovery from 12th on the grid to fourth in Imola.

When asked by Crash.net if Hamilton's difficulties at Ferrari have come as a surprise, Sainz answered: "No. I think the struggles are real for him, and real for me, and real for Nico Hulkenberg.

"They are real for any rookie coming into a team, although while a rookie has less experience, but also less muscle memory of other cars that he has recently driven, they are coming with a clean sheet.

"We have muscle memory of 24 races of three or four consecutive years of driving a different car so everything feels weird. Going back to Lewis, it’s completely normal the adaptation process. He’s been 10 years [12] with the same team so I think everything would feel completely odd and off to him in the Ferrari.

"In the same way for me in the Williams, the first races, I was completely lost in a lot of things. The only thing we can do as drivers is try to make that adaptation process as short as possible but the process an the races are always going to be where you take some time to adapt."

Like himself at Williams, Sainz believes it is wrong to judge Hamilton's current performances, with the Spaniard believing that it is only right to assess a career move after multiple seasons.

"You can judge how long or short that can take a driver but to judge the driver’s career in that team with six or seven races - it’s unfair," insisted Sainz.

"You can probably just judge how long or how short a driver takes to adapt to a team, but we need to wait years to see how it goes for me in Williams, how it goes for him, how it goes for Nico at Sauber/Audi. Only time will tell."