Former Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley has revealed that long-serving Maranello personnel are drawing direct comparisons between seven-time champions Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher.
After a tough maiden marketing campaign with Ferrari in 2025, Hamilton has bounced again below this season’s new Formulation 1 technical rules. Having claimed his long-awaited first victory in crimson on the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, together with a string of podium finishes, the 41-year-old at the moment sits second within the drivers’ championship on the summer time break.
Based on Smedley, who spent a decade at Ferrari throughout the Schumacher period and past, Hamilton’s affect is invigorating the crew.
“I will give Lewis a shout-out on this. It additionally looks like he pushes the crew laborious, proper? And we have talked about this earlier than: whenever you get a driver of his standing in, the crew simply feels 1% extra succesful,” Smedley defined on the Excessive Efficiency Racing podcast.
“They love him. Once I speak to the fellows, one-on-one or in all of the group chats that I am in, all of them completely love him as a result of he is delivering, proper?
“And he is a seven-time world champion and so they know that he’s someone who can ship. He can nonetheless ship world championships, however he is pushing them as effectively. He is pushing them in the fitting method, and so they recognise that.”
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photograph by: Clive Mason / Getty Photos
Smedley argued that Hamilton’s method is bringing again reminiscences of Ferrari’s most dominant interval. Schumacher joined the historic crew in 1996. At that time, Ferrari had not gained a drivers’ championship since 1979 or a constructors’ championship since 1983.
The German went on to assist remodel the crew and safe 5 of his seven titles in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004, and assist Ferrari win six constructors’ titles.
“The blokes who’ve been there for 20 years or extra, they recognise the similarities between him and Michael,” Smedley added.
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