Ex-Ferrari engineer points at technical reasoning for Lewis Hamilton's struggles

Former Formula 1 race engineer Rob Smedley has provided an explanation as to why Lewis Hamilton has been struggling at Ferrari this year.

Hamilton’s blockbuster move to Ferrari has so far failed to yield the desired results, with the seven-time world champion struggling to get the best out of the SF-25.

While the car itself hasn’t been very competitive, Hamilton has consistently trailed behind his teammate Charles Leclerc, scoring 41 points to the Monegasque’s total of 53.

This has led the Briton to cut a dejected figure at the end of grand prix weekends, with a tough outing in Jeddah prompting him to say there is no fix in sight for his problems.

Smedley, who worked at Ferrari between 2004 and ‘13, believes the squad's 2025 F1 contender is too loose on the rear, which plays against Hamilton’s driving style.

He believes there is no “magic bullet” to Ferrari’s troubles in 2025, with the Prancing Horse simply lacking performance to take the fight to the other frontrunning squads.

“The car is not that easy to drive,” he 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.

“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.

“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 got to find now.”

Rob Smedley's verdict on Lewis Hamilton radio messages

The Miami GP was particularly difficult for Ferrari, as not only it lagged behind Williams, but it was also embroiled in a team order saga that continued to make headlines for days to come.

Hamilton requested the team to let him through past Leclerc as he was on the faster medium tyre at that stage.

Ferrari took time to evaluate the situation and decide the best course of action, prompting a half-witted remark from its new star signing.

Ferrari did eventually issue instructions to Leclerc to give way to Hamilton, but by then the latter’s tyres were already past their prime, forcing the Maranello squad to swap them again.

Felipe Massa’s former race engineer Smedley has had to deal with team orders before, with his message “Fernando [Alonso] is faster than you” at the 2010 German GP becoming a part of the F1 folklore.

While he wasn’t critical of Ferrari taking its time to decide whether to issue team orders or not, he does believe the team should prepare itself for similar situations in the future.

“I think a lot has been made of it. 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.

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

"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.”