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 robust 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 actual concern is the failure to discover a compromise setup that may improve Lewis Hamilton’s driving type. 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 overwhelmed by his teammate. The sensation is that the seven-time System 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 driving force’s wants and the monitor traits.
It’s a déjà vu of what occurred at Mercedes when ground-effect automobiles returned. On many weekends, the engineers assigned to Lewis Hamilton’s Silver Arrow operated by trial and error as an alternative of growing 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 in all his many all-out battles with Max Verstappen.
The next 12 months, the primary with the present technical laws, he was sensationally eradicated in Q1. On the time, the discuss 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 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 one of the best automobile on the grid, besides particularly circumstances, corresponding 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 automobiles, have proven higher efficiency than the Stevenage-born driver.
4 years into steady laws, we marvel if this technology of automobiles is actually incompatible with Lewis’s driving type. A discomfort recognized at Brackley, as defined by Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes’ trackside engineering director. The Englishman’s driving type has all the time been characterised by heavy braking adopted by sharp cornering, a way often called “V-ing.”
Present automobiles don’t improve this method, as they’re heavy and liable to understeer. This makes it unimaginable to hold most pace by the apex. When the automobile allowed it, he managed to compensate along with his expertise for the problem in optimizing his power. Quite the opposite, with harder automobiles, the handicap has change into too disruptive to total efficiency.
On this context, the work of the Maranello engineers and technicians is understandably robust, as there are numerous components to contemplate in defining the setup. First, they have to set up a platform suited to the circuit’s traits. On monitor, the setup should be refined to deal with the present problems with the 677 mission, and at last, compromises should be discovered to make the automobile extra snug 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 will probably be fast sufficient to not waste what, not less than 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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