MARANELLO: Ferrari have yet to set a date for Lewis Hamilton's track debut in red overalls but his 2025 car will be unveiled in Maranello on Feb. 19, the day after Formula One's unprecedented 10-team livery launch in London.
Ferrari fans are eager for a first glimpse of the seven times world champion driving for their team since his move from Mercedes but the buzz around the Briton needs to be carefully managed.
Hamilton, who turns 40 on Jan. 7 and replaces Spaniard Carlos Sainz, is likely to have a first outing at the Fiorano test track under rules allowing a limited use of cars that are at least two years old.
Team boss Fred Vasseur told reporters over a Christmas lunch at the track that the winter weather made planning tricky but he had no concerns about the time it might take for the sport's most successful driver to adapt to his new surroundings.
"He's not the rookie of the year. I'm not worried about this," said the Frenchman.
"We know that he will have a lot of procedures to assimilate during these couple of days but I think he's experienced enough to do it.
"We have the advantage of the simulator so he'll be able to do a race simulation, a quali simulation and be prepared with the steering wheel for the particularity of the car."
Official testing starts in Bahrain on Feb. 26-28.
Vasseur said there would be no official presentation of Hamilton, as there was when Michael Schumacher joined in the 1990s.
"We have to be focused on the season," he said. "It will be a very tight period between the first day and the launch, a matter of weeks. I want everybody to focus on performance.
"We will have the launch of the championship, we will have the launch of the car. It's already two events and it's far too much (to do another)," he added.
Hamilton will need a new race engineer, with his long-term sidekick Peter 'Bono' Bonnington staying at Mercedes to work with the driver's 18-year-old Italian replacement Kimi Antonelli.
Vasseur said he knew who would be assigned to Hamilton but kept it to himself.
"The target is not to do a copy/paste of what Lewis is doing and try to attract all the people from Mercedes and to do a Mercedes team," he added.
"They were not champions the last two or three years. It means we have to do different and we will do different with our team, guys and resources.
"We have to find the best way to manage Lewis, I know him pretty well but I don't want to do at all a copy/paste of what he did in the past."
Vasseur, whose own efforts to learn Italian have had limited results, joked that he would assist him.
"You know that 99% of the job is in English, I think it's good to speak a little bit of Italian for the mechanics and for the relationship into the team but I'm not sure it's crucial for the performance," he added.
"I will be the teacher of Lewis." --REUTERS