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 staff its first podium of the season. The Monegasque, regardless of the challenges plaguing the SF-25, has discovered another answer to extract the utmost potential from the automotive whereas ready for the updates to make the automotive extra aggressive.
Lewis Hamilton arrives in Miami with a really completely 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 inside the similar race, on the ultra-fast Jeddah monitor he was soundly crushed by his teammate. The sensation is that the seven-time System 1 world champion has not been capable of finding a strong baseline. A constant platform on which to regulate the SF-25’s setup to swimsuit 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 means of trial and error as an alternative of growing the setup from a primary 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 12 months, the primary with the present technical rules, 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 staff he nonetheless faces the identical difficulties he already skilled, it’s truthful to ask some questions—maybe unpopular, however on the similar time believable.
Within the ground-effect period, Lewis Hamilton has by no means pushed the most effective automotive on the grid, besides particularly circumstances, akin to Las Vegas or Spa-Francorchamps final season. In hindsight, his teammates, particularly 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 rules, we surprise if this era of vehicles is really incompatible with Lewis’s driving fashion. A discomfort identified 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 called “V-ing.”
Present vehicles don’t improve this strategy, as they’re heavy and liable to understeer. This makes it inconceivable to hold most velocity by means of the apex. When the automotive allowed it, he managed to compensate together with his expertise for the issue in optimizing his power. Quite the opposite, with harder vehicles, the handicap has develop into too disruptive to general efficiency.
On this context, the work of the Maranello engineers and technicians is understandably robust, as there are lots 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 venture, and eventually, compromises have to be discovered to make the automotive extra comfy for Lewis Hamilton to drive.
Within the second Dash Race of the 2025 System 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, at the least in concept, was purported to mark the rebirth of the seven-time F1 world champion. We await the following two days on monitor to be taught extra.
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