Smedley warns: No ‘magic bullet’ for Hamilton and Ferrari’s woes

Former Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley has weighed in on Lewis Hamilton’s underwhelming start to life at Ferrari, offering a technical explanation for the seven-time world champion’s ongoing struggles while emphasizing that there is no simple fix to either his or the team’s performance issues.

Hamilton, who joined the Scuderia in a high-profile move ahead of the 2025 Formula 1 season, has found himself trailing teammate Charles Leclerc in both qualifying and race results.

With just 41 points to Leclerc’s 53, and a series of disappointing weekends behind him, questions have mounted over why the SF-25 seems to resist his typically dominant style.

Smedley, who worked at Ferrari during the 2000s and for a long period as Felipe Massa’s race engineer, believes the root of the issue lies in the car’s fundamental design and how it interacts with Hamilton’s driving preferences.

Rear Instability a Key Factor in Hamilton’s Struggles

“The car is not that easy to drive,” Smedley explained on the F1 Nation podcast. “It certainly doesn't suit Lewis' driving style. Charles can get a bit more on top of it over a single timed lap.”

The Briton pointed to rear-end instability – particularly through medium to high-speed corners – as a specific flaw in the SF-25 that hampers Hamilton’s effectiveness.

“When you have a high-speed turn-in in a medium-high speed corner, you need a really solid rear. We have seen in the past that when Lewis doesn't have that that he can lean on, [then he struggles],” he said.

“If the car is a bit tail-happy he is unhappy and he can't get the best out of it. That's just his driving style.”

While Hamilton’s issues might look glaring from the outside, Smedley dismissed the idea of a single transformative fix.

“I do think that there is just a general lack of performance. It will be tiny tiny margins. It will not be one thing that can do that car that suddenly becomes the silver bullet,” he cautioned.

“There will be just a series of things they have got to do. There are in this position at the moment. They are where they are.”

“This is where you see their true mettle. Can they work their way out of it? Can they find more performance?

“If they can find more general performance, both qualifying and the race – you are talking about two-three tenths – it will put them in a significantly stronger position. They are the margins that they’ve got to find now.”

Team Orders and Strategy Execution Under Scrutiny

For many, Ferrari’s strategic weakness was once again laid bare at the Miami Grand Prix last time out, where Hamilton was frustratingly stuck behind Leclerc despite being on the faster medium tyre.

Although the team eventually instructed Leclerc to let Hamilton through, the delay meant the Briton had already lost the advantage, leading to further tyre changes and lost opportunities.

Smedley, no stranger to intra-team politics after delivering to Massa the iconic “Fernando is faster than you” message during the 2010 German Grand Prix, acknowledged the complexities involved in making quick strategy decisions.

“I think a lot has been made of it,” he said. “There are two sides to this. First of all, it's really good clickbait and I have been in that situation so many times when the driver is asking for something they feel is entirely obvious, but there is a lot of cognitive function that needs to go into making that decision.

“If you think about it, you listen to it, it [the decision-making process] felt like a long time, [but] Fred [Vasseur] said it was just a lap and a half they were making that decision.”

• Read also: Wolff: Hamilton ‘magic’ still alive, just waiting to shine

That said, Smedley urged the team to be more proactive when planning for alternate race strategies that involve both drivers.

“On the flip side, they knew that they had two drivers on contra strategies, that didn't happen outside their control,” he noted.

“You would then argue that for the future – and I'm sure everyone in the team would agree with that – just be slightly better prepared so when one driver comes behind the other on a different strategy, what you don't want to do is hold them up and ruin the chance of that strategy working.”

As Hamilton and Ferrari look ahead to the rest of the season, Smedley’s assessment offers both a dose of realism and a challenge: the problems won’t be solved overnight, but through incremental progress, there’s still a path forward.

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