Why Hamilton is upsetting engineers in Maranello – Lewis Hamilton’s first Formula One season at Ferrari has been anything but straight forward despite a positive early start to his first campaign for the Scuderia. In an all new car with a completely different type of F1 Powertrain, at the season opener Hamilton qualified right behind his team mate, a respectable two tenths of a second slower than Charles Leclerc.
In the Grand Prix, both Ferrari cars struggled for pace, with Leclerc finishing the race in P8 and Hamilton two places further back. Come round two in China, and Ferrari hit the ground running right off the transporter. Hamilton claimed Sprint pole on Friday afternoon going on to take the victory the next morning.
Two races in, one win for Hamilton, what could be better? Yet come Sunday’s Shanghai Grand Prix, Ferrari were left with egg on their face as both cars were disqualified after the chequered flag. Leclerc’s car was found to be a kilo underweight, but for Hamilton the ride height he’d chosen was declared ‘illegal’ given the plank wear under the floor was more than 9mm.
Hamilton calls meetings to discuss change
From hero to zero in 24 hours, was how it must have felt for the newbie at Ferrari and things would prove to remain difficult for the seven times champion with him now trailing home behind his team mate in 12 of the 14 Grand Prix now complete this year. Leclerc has picked up five podiums along the way, whilst Hamilton’s best finish to date is P4.
Indeed Lewis will join an unfortunate club of ex-Ferrari drivers should he fail to make the top three in the next four race weekends. After joining Ferrari in 1981, Didier Pironi failed to make the podium in his first eighteen drives for the team. Hamilton has until Singapore to rectify his failure to make the Sunday presentations, unless he is to equal or even surpass the Italian’s unwanted record.
As was only to be expected, Hamilton has been grilled each race weekend over how his integration into the Ferrari setup is progressing. The scores on the doors have Leclerc with around 60% of the points garnered for the team, a tally unbefitting of a seven times world champion.
In the run up to the Belgium Grand Prix, the damn appeared to break for Hamilton. Continually asked whether he can lead Ferrari out of their nigh on two decades of championship drought, Lewis replied: “I held a lot of meetings. I’ve called lots of meetings with the heads of the team, so I’ve sat with [chairman] John [Elkann], [chief executive] Benedetto [Vigna], [team principal] Fred [Vasseur],” he revealed stating he has been at Ferrari HQa busy “two days a week.
Braking Point
“And several meetings I’ve sat with the head of our car development, with Loic [Serra], with also the heads of different departments – talking about the engine for next year, suspension for next year – things that you want, issues that I have with this car.
“I’ve sent documents through the year. After the first few races, I did a full document for the team. Then, during this break, I had another two documents that I sent in. So, then I come in and want to address those.”
Hamilton has clearly been proactive since joining the Scuderia, with insiders revealing to TJ13 many of his demands have been met with resistance from the Ferrari engineers. Lewis first point of call having driven the car for just a day and a half in testing was the brakes on the SF-25. The pedal locations were not to his liking, something Ferrari fixed fairly quickly but the braking issues in fact ran much deeper.
Some may not appreciate the difficulty of driving a formula one car with one particular manufacturers powertrain in the back, then quickly moving to another car concept with a different power unit supplier. Carlos Sainz now with his fifth Formula One team explained in Miami the main challenge facing a driver when joining another team.
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Lewis’ demands for 2026 powertrain
“The Mercedes PU is probably the biggest change in changing teams that I have had to adapt [to],” Sainz revealed. “While there is obviously aerodynamics and suspension, you go through [that and] everything feels completely different, but when they change the engine that’s when you really feel some big differences, and I do feel very big differences compared to Ferrari,” revealed the Spaniard.
Hamilton will be experiencing this for the first time, given during his lengthy career he has only ever been powered by Mercedes. He has complained to the Ferrari power unit division that Ferrari’s engine braking, which generates electricity for the battery, cuts in far more aggressively than the one he drove at Mercedes.
In his documents, Hamilton has already set out this problem must be solved for the new breed of 2026 powertrains coming soon. The aim must be for the engineers in Maranello to design a smoother, more progressive engine braking response. Being advised that your power unit is not as good as another across the F1 paddock, is unlikely to have won Hamilton friends in the engineering canteen.
Despite this being the final year of the current set of design regulations, Ferrari in their wisdom went for the revolution rather than evolution approach with the SF-25. The switch from push rod to a pull rod philosophy at the front end has delivered the intended improved turn in characteristics of the car. However, it has also increased understeer when the car is in tight technical sections of a track.
Sensitive steering
Hamilton has tried to compensate for this by introducing more front end load, yet this has had the effect of making the steering even more sensitive.
Lewis has also been experimenting with a wide range of setups for much of the year, whilst Charles Leclerc tends to remain within the parameters set by the pre-race weekend simulations. Team insiders have suggested this has led to “blurred” set up compromises given the Mercedes style combinations of anti roll bar stiffness, damper rates and wing angles do not fit the Ferrari balance philosophy.
Again the engineers will be scratching their collective heads, at what to them appears to be bizarre experimentation. Hamilton is going analogue and ignoring Ferrari’s latest technological solutions.
Much was written before Lewis arrival in Maranello, about how Leclerc and Hamilton have similar deriving styles and therefore should both be able to extract. Similar performance form the SF-25. Yet this was not true and in fact they diverge sharply when it comes to rear end stability. Both drivers enjoy an aggressive front end loaded driving style, but when it comes to the rear Hamilton prefers it much more stable, even if this means departing from Ferrari’s preferred setup direction.
The diverging preferences of the Ferrari duo
Recently Hamilton has admitted to using the kind of setup that the car design philosophy demands. “Set-up even closer to Charles, yeah,” he said in Belgium. “He drives a massively oversteering car. Somehow slides the rear, so it doesn’t have degradation. When I slide the rear, I get massive degradation.]
These differences have created a number of challenges within the team, both at the circuit and back in the Maranello HQ. Hamilton is clearly pushing for substantive changes within the Ferrari team, including some of an “organisational” nature, where he feels personnel would be better deployed elsewhere.
With Ferrari’s 2026 F1 challenger in an advanced stage of development. There is coming a completely new chassis and Powertrains coming but the stark contrasts in the preferences of Hamilton and Leclerc, will continue to create problems for the team looking to create a unified design philosophy.
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Hamilton reveals trouble in Maranello
Tough choices face Fred Vasseur. Does the car lean towards Hamilton’s wish list or follow Leclerc’s more consistent style – which has been the historic Ferrari way? Further it is clearly difficult for engineers at the peak of their trade to be told they need to make their car more like one of the competent.
When asked about his “useless” comment after the Hungarian Grand Prix, Hamilton revealed all was not at all well back at Ferrari HQ. “There’s a lot going on in the background that is not… great, so…”
Clearly Hamilton has caused a stir amongst the engineers of F1’s sleeping giant. Maybe yet he will follow in the footsteps of Ferrari legend Michael Schumacher and become the catalyst which sees the team return to title winning ways. Although at 40 years of age, its questionable whether he can wait five seasons as did Michael, before claiming his first championship whilst driving in red.
F1 managing expectations over impending crisis
Formula One is entering the unknown as Adrian Newey describes it. “The reality is I can’t remember another time in Formula 1 when both the chassis regulations and the regulations have changed simultaneously.
“And in this case the chassis regulations have been very much written to try to compensate, let’s say, for the power unit regulations,” said the F1 car design guru at the Autosport’s annual January event this season.
Newey goes on to warn that one manufacturer may “dominate” the next era of F1 regulations stating, “there has to be a chance that one manufacturer will come out well on top and it’ll become a power unit-dominated regulation, at least to start with.”…. READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
