Is Ferrari wasteful in letting Hamilton and Leclerc free? Smedley: “Betting on Lewis is the only title chance”

The best driver duo is (finally) that of Ferrari. The rebirth of Lewis Hamilton, who returned to being competitive at high levels after a 2025 to forget, and the finally positive and encouraging weekend with which Charles Leclerc put an end to an objectively difficult period, certify the strength of the Ferrari driver duo. So, after a year and a half of waiting, now the Cavallino can finally boast – even on the track and not just on paper – the best pairing of the entire starting grid. Yet, however, the points lost in the last weekends by Andrea Kimi Antonelli, with the gap to his pursuers having more than halved compared to a few weeks ago, raises a doubt: isn’t it that, with two strong and competitive drivers, capable – as seen at Silverstone – of taking points away from each other, doesn’t there constitute a risk of losing the contest against Mercedes? Click here to add Formula Passion as your favorite source on Google Discover: you will find our content more easily. But do we need team orders? Rob Smedley speaks A doubt to which ex-Ferrari engineer, Rob Smedley, is convinced he has the answer. And it is affirmative: the Scuderia should, in his opinion, favor one of the two drivers, and incidentally Lewis Hamilton, the one currently best placed in the standings with his 147 points, 39 more than those collected so far by Charles Leclerc (108). An opinion that Felipe Massa’s former track engineer at Maranello (and then also at Williams) expressed during the last episode of the High Performance Racing podcast: “I agree 100% (with the idea that Ferrari should prefer one of the two drivers, ed.). And I have to go against my logical sense in saying that I think that doing something extreme like this is the only chance for Ferrari to win the world championship.” “I think that if Ferrari managed to overtake Mercedes in terms of car performance – adds Smedley – and then allowed the drivers to race against each other with such a large gap between Lewis and Charles, the likelihood of them winning the world drivers’ championship would decrease significantly. But it also goes against my logic because there are too many variables still in play… Why on earth would they really do that? However, I believe that this is the only strategy available to Ferrari to make Hamilton win this world championship.”

Automobile Magazine – Formula1 English, News

2026-07-10 15:29:00