Hamilton background, why his Ferrari was unrecognizable in the race: “A mistake by me and my engineer”

Lewis Hamilton, an uphill weekend ended From poleman on Friday and undisputed captain of Ferrari in the Sprint Race, to third and disappointed – also for the strategic choice to return to the pits under the Safety Car regime – at the end of Sunday’s GP. It’s a Silverstone full of strong emotions, that of Lewis Hamilton, who started off great but arrived at the end of the weekend a little in trouble, at least in performance difficulty compared to teammate Charles Leclerc. And even if the seven-time world champion still wanted to claim paternity of the winning set-up which allowed the Red team to collect its second success of the season, there was however an error in the setup of the SF-26 number 44 which prevented Sir Lewis from performing at his best. Click here to add Formula Passion as your favorite source on Google Discover: you will find our content more easily. The background: an error with the set-up stopped the 44. Hamilton himself tells the background story, speaking to Sky UK microphones after the checkered flag at Silverstone: the 41-year-old Englishman in fact underlined how “there was a lack of grip on the front end”. “We definitely underestimated – adds the English pilot – the importance of the front wing. But it was my mistake and my engineer’s.” Looking at some on-board footage of Lewis Hamilton during the race, in fact, it was quite evident that the idol of the Silverstone crowd had difficulty with understeer, which made it very difficult to rotate the car in fast corners, with the consequent need to turn the steering wheel more, worsening the management of wear on the front tires (which in the first stint collapsed much earlier than those of Leclerc and Antonelli). “Regarding the set-up – he then explained in the FIA press conference after the end of the GP – I noticed that Charles had increased the front load compared to, I think, qualifying, and that he had increased the incidence of the wing, but it seemed to me that the car was really oversteering with the differential settings we had. So I removed a bit of the wing and at the start of the race I found myself with crazy understeer. As a result, he simply pulled me away. I just couldn’t get the car to turn until about halfway through the first stint.” “Then, thanks to some changes to the differential, I managed to improve the handling slightly, but at that point the gap was already huge,” concluded Lewis Hamilton.

Automobile Magazine – Formula1 English, News

2026-07-06 09:30:00