Hamilton given surprising 'Mercedes expectation' in first Ferrari season

Anthony Davidson believes a good first season for Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari would be to replicate his final Mercedes campaign. 

Hamilton's 12th and final Mercedes season was technically his worst for the team, with a seventh-place finish in the standings, although he banked two wins and a handful of podiums, breaking his long-win drought in the process. 

At times, including in those wins at the British and Belgian Grands Prix as well as a run to second in Las Vegas, Hamilton showed strong flashes of pace, but struggled towards the end of the year, especially with a dreadful weekend in Brazil.

Hamilton has conducted multiple tests for Ferrari ahead of pre-season testing to get up to speed with the new systems and engineers he will be working with, as Davidson feels a handful of wins and podiums would represent a good first year at the Scuderia.

"Seeing as the cars were pretty evenly matched, the Ferrari and the Mercedes over last year, Ferrari probably just had the slightly upper hand," Sky Sports F1's Davidson exclusively told RacingNews365. 

"But Mercedes did obviously win races, Lewis had a brilliant drive at Silverstone, and I think a good year for him will be to start off in year one pretty much just replicating what he's done at Mercedes in his final year.

"That will be a good starting point, but I know he'll be wanting more, and I think some fans will be expecting more but it is tough, changing teams is tough.

"He'll be happy with out-qualifying Leclerc for a good handful of races, but then I am fully expecting him to match Leclerc when it comes to speed in the races and he is probably better [than Leclerc] through his own experience.

"Lewis' instinctive ability to manage tyres, he's always had strong race pace even right through to Abu Dhabi, and it was never something he's had to fight or struggle against, and it was just down to qualifying, but I'm fully expecting his speed to be there in the races versus Leclerc."

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