Ferrari urged to make decisive Lewis Hamilton call for F1 title hopes

Former Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley believes the team needs to “get behind” Lewis Hamilton if it is to stand any chance of winning the 2026 Formula 1 drivers’ championship. 

Hamilton was left frustrated with Ferrari’s strategy at the Dutch Grand Prix and felt the team’s failure to swap positions with team-mate Charles Leclerc cost him a potential podium finish and vital points for his championship bid. 

The seven-time world champion slipped to third place in the drivers’ championship standings after finishing fourth behind George Russell, though the pair are tied on points, 59 behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli. 

Smedley argued that Ferrari needs to be ruthless and take drastic action to have any hope of beating the Mercedes drivers to this year’s world championship and end the Italian outfit’s title drought. 

“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,” he told the High Performance Racing podcast.

“As hard as that is for Charles and the team that sits on that side of the garage with Charles and all the rest of it, they all work for Ferrari.

“Lewis has had the better run, and that's how it is this year. Lewis has had the better run and done the better job. And I think if they're going to steal points from Mercedes, they're going to do that as a team.

“They haven't got the best car consistently, but they have on occasions got the best car, and they're going to make it count then, and they're going to make sure that Lewis wins. 

“On all the other occasions, they're just going to make sure that they maximise Lewis' points. 

“This is just about doing what is the sensible thing for the team and trying to maximise Ferrari's position in the world championship.”

Former Alpine and Aston Martin team principal Otmar Szafnauer agreed with Smedley and urged Ferrari to prioritise Hamilton if it is serious about winning the title.

“To me, you’ve got to focus on what your objective is,” Szafnauer said. 

“At a team where a drivers’ world championship for them is more meaningful than a constructors’ world championship… They’ve always been like this, which comes from old man Ferrari.

“So if that’s your objective, then you make every decision in order to meet that objective, and they are not doing it.” 

Hamilton was on a different strategy and had fresher tyres than Leclerc when he caught his team-mate, but lost vital time behind the Monegasque because overtaking is so difficult at Zandvoort. 

The 41-year-old Briton was only released when Leclerc was told to pit, but the damage had already been done, prompting a sarcastic radio message from Hamilton directed at the Ferrari pit wall. 

“Once you are on different strategies you do it, you just do it [swap positions,” Szafnauer added. 

“We used to have a rule that if you let the guy go by to attack the car in front, and he can’t get by the car in front but his team-mate is now worse off because he let him by, you swap them at the end. 

“It didn’t hurt you at all but at least you allowed that driver to have a chance at attacking. I think Lewis is probably thinking ‘had I got ahead a little bit earlier, I may have finished on that podium’.”