Hamilton spends first week at Ferrari leading 'When to use wet tyres' seminar

Here's TopGear.com's roving correspondent, Cory Spondent, with his mostly incorrect exclusives from the world of motoring

Lewis Hamilton has made a rapid start to life at Ferrari by enrolling literally everyone who works there on a crash course into the basics of F1 strategy.

The seven-time champion is attempting to transform the famous red team – which has made a string of baffling calls on the pit wall in recent years – into a competent racing outfit ahead of his debut in Australia in March.

All members of staff at Maranello must complete Hamilton’s Strategia 101 training programme, which insiders have said was a precondition of him joining “regardless of how many gazillions his contract was worth”.

Hamilton will personally oversee several intense modules in between his sim testing and media duties, although these will be given in a form of “aggressive, interpretive mime” while he gets to grips with Italian.

Seminars to be taught by the 40-year-old are rumoured to include 'When to use full wets' and 'How to not screw up a pit stop’ and ‘Why the colours on the tyres matter’ and ‘How to stop a safety car costing you victory’ and ‘Reliability - what’s it good for?’

Hamilton’s new race engineer will also be taught how to decipher the former McLaren and Mercedes driver’s radio messages, with a leaked memo revealing that “My tyres are dead, man!” is given to mean “My tyres are perfect and I’m about to bang in several purple sectors.”

And if team errors persist, one source has indicated that Hamilton has the right to appoint his own Head of Race Strategy: “If that doesn’t keep everyone on their A-game, Don Roscoe most certainly will.”