Jacques Villeneuve, 1997 F1 world champion, believes that Lewis Hamilton’s radio struggles are a natural part of bleeding in a new relationship with a team.
“It’s been like that for every driver, every year,” Villeneuve told CardPlayer. “We only hear some of the radio messages without the context and they do that on purpose obviously because you know, it’s TV ratings.
“I found Lewis to be very calm and polite with his engineer whenever there was an issue: ‘don’t talk now’ or ‘I need this’. He’s been very good, and they need to build a relationship. He had been with the same guy for many years and it’s hard to beat that because there’s a communication line that at some point is not even the language, in a way. It’s just a level of understanding between each other that is immediate through the strength of the voice, not necessarily the words.
“That takes time to build, especially going from an English-speaking engineer who he had been with for many years to an Italian speaker for whom English is his second language. It takes time to build a new relationship.
“Some stuff will be lost in translation along the way. It just takes time to build, and they don’t need people overreacting to the radio messages.
“I found it amazing. Listening to Verstappen’s radio messages over the years. There was nothing in the one from Lewis. There’s no comparison. He was calm, this is how it is, and there was a nice response from the other side. There were no issues there so I’m not sure why people reacted to it.
“When you’re the biggest name in the sport, and the biggest team in the sport, it will happen. It’s part of the game and you just have to accept it.”