Ex-Formula 1 race engineer Rob Smedley has offered a technical explanation for Lewis Hamilton’s ongoing struggles in his debut season at Ferrari.
Hamilton’s switch to Maranello was the headline move of 2025, but the results so far have failed to match the hype.
The seven-time World Champion has been routinely outpaced by teammate Charles Leclerc and has appeared visibly frustrated across several race weekends.
After a dismal showing in Jeddah, Hamilton said there was “no fix in sight” for his problems, and Smedley now believes he has pinpointed the reason why.
“The car is not that easy to drive,” Smedley said 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.
“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 [rear end stability] that he can lean on, [he struggles].
“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.”
No immediate fix to Ferrari problems
Smedley, who served as Felipe Massa’s race engineer during his long stint at Ferrari, has ruled out any quick fixes to Ferrari’s current troubles with the team’s SF-25 car.
“I do think that there is just a general lack of performance,” he said. “It will be tiny, tiny margins. It will not be one thing that can do that car that suddenly becomes the silver bullet.
“There will be just a series of things they have got to do. They 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 got to find now.”
The Miami Grand Prix further exposed Ferrari’s frailties, both on and off the track.
Ferrari indecision compounds lacklustre pace
Not only did the team struggle for outright pace – trailing even Williams at stages – but it was also embroiled in a much-discussed team orders saga between its two drivers.
Hamilton, running the faster medium tyre, requested to be let past Charles Leclerc mid-race.
Ferrari took several laps to make a call, prompting a sarcastic remark from Hamilton over team radio. By the time the instruction came, Hamilton’s tyres had faded and the order reversed.
Smedley, who famously delivered the “Fernando is faster than you” message to Massa in 2010, sympathised with Ferrari’s situation but said lessons should be learned.
“I think a lot has been made of it. There are two sides to this,” he began.
“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.”
“Fred [Vasseur] said it was just a lap and a half they were making that decision.
“On the flip side, they knew that they had two drivers on contra strategies… 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.”
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