{"id":346277,"date":"2025-12-13T22:59:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T22:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/346277\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T22:59:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T22:59:09","slug":"hamilton-defends-important-2026-decision-made-by-ferrari","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/346277\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton defends important 2026 decision made by Ferrari"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lewis Hamilton<\/a> has strongly defended Ferrari<\/a>‘s decision to halt its aerodynamic development early in the 2025 season.”It’s a steep learning curve for all of us, and so I supported it 100%, I still do.”- Lewis HamiltonIt comes after team principal Frederic Vasseur<\/a> revealed that the team had elected to stop its development of the SF-25 from as early as April, with major focus going into the 2026 machine and the regulation overhaul that comes into effect next year.<\/p>\n

That decision was not mirrored by McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull, and that saw the Italian team drop down the standings to P4 in the Constructors’ Championship.<\/p>\n

Hamilton had a difficult debut season with the Scuderia after moving from Mercedes, finishing the 2025 season without a Grand Prix win or podium finish.<\/p>\n

\"hamilton-abu-dhabi-f1-4\"\/<\/p>\n

Ham – Photo: Race Pictures<\/p>\n

“It didn’t have a psychological effect on me personally,” the Brit started explaining to GPblog in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t know at the end of the year that we\u2019d be where we are. No one anticipated it, but it felt worse, naturally. But I was a part of it, I was one pushing for it. <\/p>\n

“It’s like: \u2018We can’t fall behind the others in terms of that development for the new car.\u2019 It’s a steep learning curve for all of us, and so I supported it 100%, I still do.<\/p>\n

“I think it was the right decision, particularly with where we were already with the car; we weren’t really fighting for a championship. That just meant that it’s been harder to maintain the performance that we had at the beginning of the year.”<\/p>\n

Hamilton with some positives before 2026 preparationWhile Hamilton defended the decision-making made by Ferrari, the seven-time champion believed that the media’s criticism of the Scuderia “affected” the team<\/a> when speaking at the Qatar Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

A Grand Prix later at the Yas Marina Circuit, despite the challenging debut year at Ferrari, there were plenty of positives taken by Hamilton before preparation for 2026 gets underway.<\/p>\n

“I can’t answer the question for the rest of the faults we have at the beginning of the year. I can’t answer the question for the rest of the team. I think everyone’s said really positive things in my experience, so I’ve not seen it psychologically.”<\/p>\n

Want to stay up-to-date with what happens in the F1<\/a> paddock? Then GPblog’s F1 Paddock Update video is the perfect way to do it. Subscribe to GPblog’s YouTube channel and turn on notifications to never miss the latest episodes. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton has strongly defended Ferrari‘s decision to halt its aerodynamic development early in the 2025 season.”It’s a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,35119,826,813,816,18894,823,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-346277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-f1-news","12":"tag-ferrari","13":"tag-formula-1","14":"tag-formula1","15":"tag-frederic-vasseur","16":"tag-lewis-hamilton","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}