There’s a stark distinction in morale between the 2 sides of the Ferrari storage. Charles Leclerc arrives on the sixth spherical of the championship after the sturdy efficiency in Jeddah, which earned the Maranello workforce its first podium of the season. The Monegasque, regardless of the challenges plaguing the SF-25, has discovered an alternate answer to extract the utmost potential from the automobile whereas ready for the updates to make the automobile extra aggressive.
Lewis Hamilton arrives in Miami with a really totally different spirit. Greater than the lackluster outcomes and the few factors collected within the first 5 Grands Prix of the season, the true concern is the failure to discover a compromise setup that may improve Lewis Hamilton’s driving fashion. The weekend in Saudi Arabia was emblematic on this sense, marked by a “efficiency despair.”
Whereas within the first 4 rounds of the season, the Briton confirmed flashes of competitiveness even throughout the identical race, on the ultra-fast Jeddah monitor he was soundly overwhelmed by his teammate. The sensation is that the seven-time Components 1 world champion has not been capable of finding a stable baseline. A constant platform on which to regulate the SF-25’s setup to go well with each the motive force’s wants and the monitor traits.
It’s a déjà vu of what occurred at Mercedes when ground-effect vehicles returned. On many weekends, the engineers assigned to Lewis Hamilton’s Silver Arrow operated by way of trial and error as a substitute of creating the setup from a fundamental configuration. Jeddah is a revealing monitor on this respect. Lewis Hamilton was the pole-sitter and winner of the inaugural GP version there, after one among his many all-out battles with Max Verstappen.
The next yr, the primary with the present technical laws, he was sensationally eradicated in Q1. On the time, the speak was of a setup that made the Mercedes W13 undriveable. On a number of events over the previous three years, the British driver has raced in no man’s land. If with a brand new workforce he nonetheless faces the identical difficulties he already skilled, it’s honest to ask some questions—maybe unpopular, however on the identical time believable.
Within the ground-effect period, Lewis Hamilton has by no means pushed the very best automobile on the grid, besides specifically circumstances, similar to Las Vegas or Spa-Francorchamps final season. In hindsight, his teammates, specifically George Russell and Charles Leclerc, regardless of the poor competitiveness of the vehicles, have proven higher efficiency than the Stevenage-born driver.
4 years into steady laws, we surprise if this era of vehicles is really incompatible with Lewis’s driving fashion. A discomfort recognized at Brackley, as defined by Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes’ trackside engineering director. The Englishman’s driving fashion has all the time been characterised by heavy braking adopted by sharp cornering, a method often known as “V-ing.”
Present vehicles don’t improve this strategy, as they’re heavy and liable to understeer. This makes it not possible to hold most pace by way of the apex. When the automobile allowed it, he managed to compensate together with his expertise for the problem in optimizing his energy. Quite the opposite, with tougher vehicles, the handicap has develop into too disruptive to general efficiency.
On this context, the work of the Maranello engineers and technicians is understandably powerful, as there are a lot of elements to think about in defining the setup. First, they have to set up a platform suited to the circuit’s traits. On monitor, the setup have to be refined to handle the present problems with the 677 mission, and eventually, compromises have to be discovered to make the automobile extra comfy for Lewis Hamilton to drive.
Within the second Dash Race of the 2025 Components 1 season, we’ll see how far the mutual understanding between Ferrari and the British champion has come. Hopefully, the method shall be fast sufficient to not waste what, not less than in idea, was imagined to mark the rebirth of the seven-time F1 world champion. We await the subsequent two days on monitor to study extra.
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