Ferrari warned over ‘negative loop’ Miami setback after 11-upgrade gamble

Former Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley has warned of a “negative loop” the team could be facing following the disappointment of Miami.

Ferrari brought the most upgrades of any team to the Miami Grand Prix, but it failed to bring the Scuderia closer to top spot. Smedley called that experience “soul-destroying” and explained why it could prove costly for future updates to the SF-26 car.

Ferrari Miami GP upgrades raise fresh concerns

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As the F1 2026 campaign resumed in Miami, Ferrari topped the upgrades list by introducing 11.

Yet Ferrari crossed the line sixth and seventh in Miami.

Charles Leclerc led early in the grand prix, but fell away from Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli and McLaren’s Lando Norris out front.

Leclerc’s P6 became eighth when he received a 20-second post-race penalty. Having spun and sustained damage heading onto the final lap, Leclerc was adjudged to have left the track and gained an advantage multiple times by cutting the chicanes.

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said the Scuderia’s upgrades worked as expected. Leclerc suggested that rivals had outdeveloped the team.

McLaren seemingly took another step forward with updates to the MCL40, while Max Verstappen and the Red Bull RB22 proved a far more potent threat in Miami.

Mercedes is expected to bring a package to the Canadian Grand Prix having opted against bringing upgrades to Miami.

Speaking of Canada, Leclerc’s Ferrari teammate Lewis Hamilton said he will not use the team’s simulator before the Canadian GP, claiming that the virtual and real car are not aligning.

Appearing on the High Performance Racing podcast, it was put to Smedley, a Ferrari engineer between 2004-13, that it must be depressing for the Ferrari crew to see limited pay-off from bringing all of those upgrades to Miami.

“One-hundred per cent it is,” Smedley confirmed.

“It’s slightly soul-destroying, because from a technical point of view, it starts essentially this negative loop. What did you bring? What’s working? What’s not working?

“If it’s not correlating in the windtunnel, or your simulation tools are not matching what’s on track, you’ve then got to do this whole reverse engineering process where you go back to the tunnel and that holds up all of the development in the tunnel that you should be doing and it’s just a disaster.”

Former Aston Martin and Alpine F1 team boss Otmar Szafnauer doubled down on Smedley’s point.

There is no evidence to suggest that Ferrari has been misled by correlation issues, but such a problem would have significant knock-on effects, Szafnauer warns.

“Two things that happen,” he began. “You have finite resources and now you’re putting those resources on correlation, not making the car go faster.

“And the reason you’re doing that is because if you don’t have good correlation, it’s only luck that you make the car go faster. So you’ve got to fix that, if that’s what their issue is, first and foremost.

“But the same engineers that would be looking at performance, on track performance, are now looking at correlation issues.”

More on Ferrari from PlanetF1.com

Charles Leclerc sends Ferrari warning as rivals outdevelop SF-26 upgrades

Lewis Hamilton ditches Ferrari simulator ahead of Canadian GP over correlation concerns

Ferrari had emerged as the closest challenger to Mercedes in F1 2026, but McLaren and Verstappen appear to have joined the fight and are potentially ahead of Ferrari in the queue at this point.

Ferrari remains second in the championship, but Szafnauer believes that the Scuderia is just keeping that seat warm for McLaren.

“I had a conversation with the chief engineer at Mercedes. This was on Friday,” Szafnauer revealed.

“Andrew [Shovlin] and I started the same day at British American Racing, so I know him well. We shared an office, actually.

“I said: ‘I think you guys are going to win this championship, but McLaren are going to be your biggest challengers.’

“He said: ‘I think you’re wrong.’ He told me all the reasons. He said: ‘I think it will be Ferrari who will be our biggest challengers.’

“Maybe that’s because this was before he saw the 11 upgrades!

“But as it turned out, I think McLaren soon will leapfrog Ferrari in the championship. They’re still behind but they had a strong weekend, McLaren.”

McLaren sits 16 points behind Ferrari in the early F1 2026 Constructors’ standings.

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