The SHOCK results from Hamilton’s Pirelli test

The Formula One world is waking up from it winter hibernation, with Lewis Hamilton the brightest and most alert of those awakening from their winter slumber. Ferrari’s latest driver has now completed his maximum limit of 1000km of testing for this year in previous year Ferrari F1 cars.

Whilst the lap times are largely irrelevant, with Charles Leclerc also running in the previous year car tests, some kind of benchmark between the team mates is possible to ascertain even at this early stage of the year.

As expected even his five year’s experience driving the Italian made F1 cars, the Monegasque driver was overall quicker than his new team mate and unlike the seven times world champion who practically destroyed his SF-23 in Barcelona, Lelcerc completed the test miles without incident.

 

 

 

Ferrari retrain Hamilton’s braking style

The Italian media have reported that the engineers from Maranello were concerned about Lewis Hamilton’s braking technique in their new ground effect cars and unlike his last three seasons with Mercedes, they ‘manned up’ and confronted the British driver, explaining he needed to modify his driving style on corner entry.

This flaw in Hamilton’s driving technique was identified by Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff last year when he explained: Speaking to AMuS Wolf said: “He [Hamilton] brakes late and throws the car aggressively into the corner. The car and the tyres can’t handle that. With these cars, it is sometimes better to drive at 98 percent. And that applies even more to qualifying than the race.”

This was indeed an attempt by the Mercedes boss to explain the hammering Lewis received from his team mate in qualifying last season, which saw the final intra team score 19-5 to the younger George Russell. Hamilton in certain races looked as though he was close to his career best, particularly as the season drew to a close in Las Vegas.

This made his bounce back three weeks later in Las Vegas all the more remarkable as Lewis’ charged through the field from P10 to close down and almost pass his team mate who went on to claim victory under the lights in the chilly evening in the Nevada desert.

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Lewis rejuvenated

Just two weeks before the race along the strip ,a disillusioned Lewis Hamilton was forced to watch one of the greatest drives of this century as Max Verstappen in monsoon conditions came from his starting position of seventeenth to slice through the field and finish some 20 seconds ahead of the second place Alpine of Esteban Ocon. 

The drive was mesmerising to watch with the world champion at times circulating over two seconds a lap quicker than anyone else could manage. Whilst it was reminiscent of one or two of the wet weather wins from when Hamilton was in his pomp, there was something about the way Verstappen handled beautifully what had been just the third or fourth quickest car earlier in the weekend in Brazil.

Hamilton could manage just tenth place in the rain soaked Interlagos and in his post race briefing, the utterly deflated Mercedes driver suggested he was done for the year despite there being three Grand Prix weekends remaining.

This week Ferrari and their drivers were on duty testing the all new 2026 prototype tyres for next years huge car design rule change. This was the first time this iteration of slick tyres had been on show form Pirelli and while again not fully representative of what could be achieved in a one lap qualifying run, the laps times were in fact most revealing.

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Pirelli require modified 2024 F1 car

Firstly we need to understand the SF-24 car being driven by the Ferrari pair was not the car raced by Sainz and Leclerc towards the end of last year. It is described as an SF-24 ‘mule’, given Pirelli required a car with reduced levels of down force to simulate the anticipated aerodynamic levels which the 2026 F1 cars will deliver.

To this end Ferrari ran their lowest rear wing configuration of 2024 used in Monza together with their Las Vegas front wing which replicated their lowest front end downforce setup from last year. The suspension was also tweaked to compliment the aero setup, yet this configuration from the Scuderia had no underfloor modifications, where 50% of the downforce is delivered on the new breed of F1 ground effect cars.

Pirelli estimated this reduced the downforce by some 20% from the SF-24 which ran towards the end of last year. McLaren too were at the Pirelli test and Lando Norris delivered the quickest time with a 1m15.21s lap which was a marked step down from the times set at last season’s Spanish Grand Prix.

In direct comparison Hamilton managed a respectable 1m15.93s on Tuesday which when compared to Charles Leclerc’s pole time last summer of a 1m11.731s appears underwhelming. Yet in the Pirelli tests the drivers are not focused on clocking up their fastest single lap and this together with the fact the tyre sizes, compounds and even the profile of the side wall are all completely different from the rubber used in 2024.

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New F1 cars 2 seconds quicker than when regs announced last June

What neither Ferrari nor McLaren could replicate was the fact the all new 2026 cars will have adjustable aerodynamic components controlled by the driver which will see the cars in low downforce configuration along the straights then switch to high downforce through the corners.

When compared to the 2024 F1 Barcelona weekend, the lap times sit somewhere in between the tines recorded across the weekend at the Montmelo circuit. Hamilton topped second practice on Friday with a 1m13.264s) and the fastest lap in the race which was Lando Norris on 1m17.115s.

The FIA’s head of single seater racing, Nicolas Tombazis, and de facto director of day to day F1 affairs for the regulatory body had set expectations at the 2024 US GP when he explained despite being stripped of a big chunk of downforce, the final cars delivered by the teams for next year will deliver similar lap times but achieve them in a very different fashion.

At the June 2024 deadline for the new car design regulations for 2026 to be published, the FIA was unhappy they’d achieved all that was required and extended there consultation period until the end of the year. Reflecting on the progress made, Tombazis reckoned they had delivered another two seconds of lap time.

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Tyre walls show a stark difference in design

“There has been an increase of performance of the car by probably about 50 points of downforce,” said the FIA official. “This has brought the performance from what maybe was minus 40% compared to current cars, to around minus 15% in terms of downforce.

“In terms of performance, the resulting lap time of the cars is very close to current cars. All that has been done as was promised in June.”

The new tyre profiles look starkly different from the current design, with the side walls now without the bulge of the previous iterations and whilst the 18 inch wheel rims are being retained, the dimensions of the front and rear tyres are being reduced. The front tyre will be narrowed by 25mm and the rear by 30mm. They will also be smaller in diameter, going from the current 720mm to 705-710mm.

Again whilst stressing this was not a flat out running of the cars and the new prototype tyres but Hamilton’s time was somewhat of a shock for those who felt he would suffer at the hands of his team mate.  The Scuderia drivers ran almost an identical number of laps with Hamilton clocking a best of 1m15.93s (87 laps) whilst Leclerc was a touch slower with a best of 1m16.06s (86 laps).

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Ferrari suspension suits Lewis more

As an aside, Hamilton looked much more at one with the 2024 F1 Ferrari car than he has in the past three seasons when driving the Mercedes’ creations. The Maranello design has a less aggressive anti-dive suspension design and whilst the downforce was much reduced when compared to the cars which races just a few weeks ago, it was evident to the naked eye Lewis was far more comfortable when cornering and under heavy braking.

Hamilton had complained vociferously to Mercedes that the flaw in their recent F1 car designs was due to the cockpit position being to far forward. Yet as TJ13 noted at the time, this was a mis diagnosis form the seven times F1 champion given the Ferrari appears to have the seat position even more advanced.

Yet the suspension geometry looked to be far more compliant than the Mercedes’ F1 car designs of the last three years which allows for a more traditional style of Hamilton braking, which is more like the style used in karting, something which has defined Lewis Hamilton’s racing career.

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F1 2025 is almost anyones game

Whilst Hamilton has proven it has been more difficult for him to adapt to the new ground effect cars than say another ageing driver like Fernando Alonso, he may well find that the Ferrari’s interpretation of the breed of F1 cars is far more to his liking than the creations from Mercedes.

The excitement levels have no gone up since this weeks testing, given Lewis cold be a genuine contender fore the 2025 drivers’ title if the Scuderia deliver a car that can beat firstly the McLaren’s and then the all new Red Bull design which they hope will return them to the front of the field.

Yet the nightmare scenario remains that Mercedes finally crack this set of car design regulations and as dark horses come out of the blocks firing on all cylinders, with Kimi Antoneli winning on debut. 

Enough of the fantasising 🙂

 

 

 

 

FIA late 2025 regs change is the least worst option

The FIA came under fire on a number of fronts during the 2024 season with the drivers’ union forced to pen only their second ever open letter to F1’s governing body. The strongly worded document demanded the president of the association treat the F1 competitors with more respect following his accusation they were behaving like ‘rappers.’

“We urge the FIA president to consider his own tone and language when talking to our member drivers, or indeed about them, whether in a public forum or otherwise,”the statement read. “Further, our members are adults. They do not need to be given instructions by the media about matters as trivial as the wearing of jewellery or underpants.”

Yet this was just one of the controversies which rocked F1 as FOM finally came out with their response to the FIA giving Andretti the green light to become the eleventh team on the grid. In an incoherent statement, the operating company owned by the F1 commercial rights holder appeared to suggest amongst other strange requirements that Andretti would be incapable of becoming a font running team quickly…. READ MORE