Lewis Hamilton defended as Ferrari receive 'bad start' blame

Jacques Villeneuve has defended Lewis Hamilton's mixed start to the season by insisting Ferrari is to blame for the team's current difficulties. 

Hamilton finished 10th in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix before defying the odds in China to claim a shock sprint pole, which he converted into a victory. 

It marked his and Ferrari's first sprint win, although was quickly overshadowed by him and the team enduring a Sunday to forget at the Shanghai International Circuit. 

Ferrari struggled for pace in qualifying for the grand prix, taking the chequered flag in fifth and sixth. In the end, it meant nothing as both Hamilton and team-mate Charles Leclerc were disqualified. 

Many have jumped to criticise the seven-time world champion for scoring just nine points so far, however, 1997 title-winner Villeneuve has pinned the blame solely on Ferrari.

"He's won a sprint race. He's had a great start," Villeneuve told CardPlayer. Lewis got a pole in a sprint race and that's actually very good. It’s more than what people were expecting in the first two races.

"His Saturday in China was incredible because it wasn't the best car, it wasn't a winning car, and he was really on it. He maximised the fact that he was on pole and controlled that sprint race.

"From what I heard Ferrari then made some changes for the actual race and it just wasn't as good but anyway, they got disqualified. It’s more a bad start to a season for Ferrari than it is for Lewis."

Ferrari disqualification 'really strange'

The two Ferrari drivers were disqualified in China for different reasons. Hamilton's car suffered excessive plank wear, whilst Leclerc's was underweight. 

Ferrari accepted both disqualifications and recognised mistakes had been made, with Villeneuve noting that an underweight car is not too uncommon.

"It happens. It happened to Mercedes last year with George Russell," added Villeneuve. "One kilo, that’s rough, but that's the rules and they should have taken the tyres into account.

"Nobody had tested the hard tyre. Lewis put on a new set. He did a two-stop, one of the only drivers to do so and it wasn’t underweight. Then Leclerc kept on driving on the same old tyres and ended up using more rubber than expected."

Villeneuve continued: "They could have thought about it, but that's also why the drivers drive on the dirty part of the track on the slowdown lap to pick up rubber to bring back and put some weight on the car. Maybe they didn't pick up enough rubber on the way down."

Whilst Leclerc's disqualification was a simple, yet very costly misjudgement, Hamilton's was the complete opposite. 

Villeneuve was left puzzled by the cause of the 40-year-old's disqualification, and wondered how Ferrari were not aware of the risk of excessive plank wear ahead of the race.

"And then Lewis, with the skid block hitting; the cars spend their whole race hitting the ground so the fact that the skid block was halved by 0.5 mm, that’s a lot," the Canadian said. "There’s really something strange with the setup if they manage to eat so much of the skid.

"It's really hard to go through that. It’s really strange. They would have seen it in the sprint race so the setup change they made for that race was not the best."