Former Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley believes the team must fully back Lewis Hamilton if they are to have any chance of winning the 2026 Formula 1 drivers' championship. Without a decisive call, Scuderia's title drought may continue.
Hamilton's frustration peaked at the Dutch Grand Prix, where a flawed strategy and the team's failure to swap positions with teammate Charles Leclerc cost him a potential podium and vital points in the title fight.
As a result, the seven-time world champion slipped to third in the standings, 59 points behind leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli. Despite being level on points with George Russell, the situation is far from ideal for Hamilton's title ambitions.
Smedley stressed that Ferrari must be ruthless, even uncompromising, to compete with the Mercedes drivers. For him, prioritizing Hamilton is the logical step, given the Brit's more consistent performance this season.
“My opinion from the start has always been, if Ferrari want to have an impact on this world championship, they have to get behind him,” Smedley told the High Performance Racing podcast. “As hard as that is for Charles and the team on that side of the garage, they all work for Ferrari. Lewis has had the better run and done the better job this year. If they're going to steal points from Mercedes, they'll do that as a team.”
Former Alpine and Aston Martin team principal Otmar Szafnauer agreed, urging Ferrari to focus on their primary objective: the drivers' title. “If that's your objective, then you make every decision to meet it, and they are not doing it,” he said.
The Zandvoort incident was a clear example. Hamilton, on a different strategy with fresher tires, got stuck behind Leclerc due to the difficulty of overtaking at the circuit. He was only released when Leclerc pitted, but valuable time was lost, prompting a sarcastic radio message from Hamilton to the Ferrari pit wall.
Szafnauer added that the swap rule should have been applied from the start. “Once you are on different strategies, you just do it,” he said. “We used to have a rule: if you let the guy go by to attack the car in front, and he can't get by, but his teammate is now worse off, you swap them back.”
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