Lewis Hamilton’s struggles at Ferrari aren’t just about speed or strategy – they’re also about chemistry behind the radio, according to F1 veteran engineer Rob Smedley.
The former Scuderia race engineer has weighed in on Hamilton’s ongoing saga with a temporary race engineer, and the verdict is frank: trust and technical know-how are everything, and they don’t always come together.
Hamilton’s debut season in red was marked by moments of visible irritation, most famously when he sarcastically told his team to “have a tea break while you’re at it” during delays in team orders.
Smedley highlighted how such flashes of frustration reveal deeper cracks in the driver-engineer relationship.
“If those kinds of comments are happening on the radio, the relationship isn’t fully formed yet, and that’s where it can become unhealthy,” the Briton told the High Performance podcast.
“It’s a clear sign that frustrations are boiling over.”
Felipa Massa’s former right-hand man at Ferrari stressed that race engineers need to answer quickly and confidently, not defer to someone else.
“By the way, it is the job of the race engineer to know enough about the car and be across their work so that when the driver asks a question, you can answer quickly,” Smedley said.
“It pains me when I hear 'we’ll get back to you.' This isn’t a call centre.
“The driver is trying to perform at 10/10 while driving at 200mph. Answer him and give him confidence. If you respond like you need to go ask someone else, those tiny moments erode trust, and the relationship becomes tense.”
Reflecting on Riccardo Adami’s ill-fated relationship with Hamilton last year, Smedley noted that even seasoned professionals aren’t immune to mismatched dynamics.
“The Ferrari engineer in question has had a long and successful career, and he was recommended to Lewis by Sebastian Vettel,” he explained.
“He had a great relationship and a lot of success with Sebastian. But sometimes it’s like my story with Felipe in 2006: if it doesn’t gel, it doesn’t work.”
Drawing on his own experience with Massa, Smedley emphasized that technical mastery alone isn’t enough. The race engineer is effectively a head coach for the driver, blending insight into the car with understanding of the human behind the wheel:
“From what I know of other sports like football and rugby, it’s always about a 50/50 split when you work with athletes,” Smedley said.
“In a Formula 1 team, the race engineer is effectively the head coach for that driver, so you can’t turn up with no idea about the technical side of the job.
Felipe Massa with race engineer Rob Smedley at the 2013 Japanese GP.
“It’s really important that you understand how the car works, how the driver interacts with the vehicle, and how you optimise that whole package.
“But if you don’t understand that there’s a human being in the car - an athlete with all the flaws that we 'mere mortals' have - then it’s never going to work.”
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