Lewis Hamilton urges Ferrari to study rivals’ front wings after Miami concerns

Lewis Hamilton has called on Ferrari to study its rivals’ front wings, convinced McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull have found a performance edge the Scuderia is missing.

Hamilton had a mixed weekend at the Miami Autodrome, at times happy with his upgraded SF-26, and at other times frustrated that it didn’t have the speed to fight for a podium.

Lewis Hamilton questions Ferrari front wing performance

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Ferrari brought 11 new parts to the Miami Autodrome, including a new front wing endplate, while at the rear of the car was the revised ‘Macarena’ wing.

But while Charles Leclerc was P1 in the sole practice hour, that was Ferrari’s only pace-setting moment in a weekend in which the team’s run of podium results came to an abrupt end.

Leclerc was already outside the top three before a last-lap spin dropped him to sixth, one position ahead of Hamilton, before a post-race penalty saw Leclerc plummet to P8.

Ferrari’s troubles were compounded as McLaren replaced the Scuderia as Mercedes’ closest rival, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri joining race winner Kimi Antonelli on the podium. Red Bull also showed improved pace with Max Verstappen recording a season’s best P2 in qualifying.

McLaren and Red Bull made inroads at the front as they updated their cars for Miami, with both teams introducing seven new parts.

One of Red Bull’s updates included a new front wing, with all three front wing elements and the endplate altered to increase the load or improve flow stability, while McLaren changed the MCL40’s front wing endplates as part of its next-level front wing package.

Hamilton believes both teams have found an advantage with their front wings, one that Mercedes had already discovered earlier in the season.

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Asked about Ferrari’s rivals updates, Hamilton told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets: “Mercedes did bring improvements, just not the same as others. They had like two and we had eight or something. Their package is coming next race.

“The team [Ferrari] worked incredibly hard to run those components and it has taken a step, but the others have also taken a step.

“I heard McLaren brought a step, but that it was worth much more than they anticipated. That’s not how we’ve experienced ours. So definitely they’re doing something different.

“Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull are doing something different with the front wing to us. So we need to look into that to see whether or not there’s something we can improve on.”

Quizzed about his front wing claim and how it would affect Straight Line Mode, Hamilton replied: “Just look at everyone else’s wing and look at ours, you’ll see it looks different.

“I don’t know if that’s necessarily the whole thing, but I wonder what that’s doing, because others seem to have it and they improved.”

Earlier this year Mercedes’ front wing caught the eye at the Chinese Grand Prix where Kimi Antonelli’s wing was seen to have a multi-stage transition between the car’s straight and cornering mode. That, though, turned out to be a problem with the wing’s hydraulic pressure, and not intentional.

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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