It has taken Lewis Hamilton just seven months to understand the new world of Ferrari from the inside after a big culture shift for the seven-time champion.
Hamilton is into his 19th F1 season, but has spent his entire career with teams based in England and with a deep-rooted British mentality after six years with McLaren and 12 with Mercedes.
As such, after evaluating his new team, Hamilton has drawn up several documents, which number at least three, which he has handed over to the team.
They include an analysis of the current technical and organisational structures within Ferrari, the problems of the 2025 SF-25 car, his wishes for the 2026 machine, as well as changes which are required to drive the team forward.
Hamilton has echoed the thoughts of team-mate Charles Leclerc, well-established within Scuderia norms in his seventh season with the team, such as indicating a problem in high-speed corners.
The Scuderia's design and and simulation tools are state-of-the-art and allow for rapid tools to detect any problems with upgrades to be brought to the car.
Through his analysis, Hamilton has detected a problem with Ferrari's working processes.
Having analysed each working group at the factory, and not just in the technical department, he has found bottlenecks that do not allow the full potential to be expressed, and has recommended a different modus operandi across different departments.
This would start with the communication between the departments and being more proactive in terms of development routes.
Currently, in development, Ferrari follows several ideas and then selects the optimal one only in the pre-execution phase. The idea is to pursue different strands of development before ultimately choosing the one showing the most potential.
But these long and predictive analyses mean the team cannot keep up with the fast-paced evolution of other teams, and would be a change in medium-to-long-term strategy, ignoring minor events and focusing overall on a multi-year fixed point plan.
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Lewis Hamilton Ferrari documents
Hamilton also wants to improve the execution of Ferrari's race weekends, especially when it comes to quick and effective set-up choices, but also in the habit of the organisational planning of track days.
In his analysis of the SF-25, Hamilton is understood to have highlighted the unpredictability of the vehicle dynamics, and reactions to whatever the set-up maybe, which he feels has severely limited his understanding of the car and driving style.
For 2026, the main point Hamilton would like to be addressed would appear to be the precise balance between front and rear, with the car not using extreme set-ups.
In other words, he wants a base set-up which allows changes to be made that translate into tangible effects o the behaviour, but without wrecking the set-up.
The same applies to the effects of upgrades over the course of the season. In essence, Hamilton wants a car that is not quirky and with progressive improvement.
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