{"id":753380,"date":"2026-06-22T18:17:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T18:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/753380\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T18:17:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T18:17:21","slug":"ferrari-staff-werent-happy-when-fred-vasseur-ordered-radical-car-changes-for-lewis-hamilton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/753380\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferrari staff weren’t happy when Fred Vasseur ordered ‘radical’ car changes for Lewis Hamilton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\/ Follow us on Google Discover <\/a> <\/p>\n

Fred Vasseur has taken a whole new approach to help Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari in 2026. It has worked a treat, but initially, it did not sit well with the team.<\/p>\n

The seven-time champion struggled immensely in 2025, with Charles Leclerc<\/a> comprehensively beating him with seven podiums to his teammate\u2019s zero. Hamilton<\/a> was not comfortable in the car and was calling for extensive changes.<\/p>\n

Those arrived in 2026, as Vasseur<\/a> decided to feed off Hamilton\u2019s feedback more for the SF-26. It has resulted in the 41-year-old having a resurgence, with him winning his first race for Ferrari in Barcelona.<\/p>\n

What is the BIGGEST reason for Lewis Hamilton\u2019s turnaround at Ferrari this year? <\/p>\n

\"F1Photo by Dom Gibbons \u2013 Formula 1\/Formula 1 via Getty Images Fred Vasseur\u2019s \u2018radical\u2019 changes for Lewis Hamilton in 2026 upset Ferrari staff<\/p>\n

Ferrari adopted a whole new philosophy for 2026, and the Brit was central to it. It was not widely accepted, however, as Hamilton caused \u2018ructions\u2019 by asking for Carbon Industrie brake discs<\/a> instead of the team\u2019s usual Brembo ones.<\/p>\n

He would be right with this change as he is far more comfortable in the car and is now beating Leclerc, sitting 41 points behind Kimi Antonelli in the standings. But Ferrari staff were not impressed when the changes, as journalist Mark Hughes notes.<\/p>\n

He explained on The Race F1 Podcast<\/a>: \u201cIt\u2019s sometimes portrayed as Lewis Hamilton coming in with this superior knowledge from superior teams and saying, \u2018What a mess, this needs sorting, this needs sorting, and this needs sorting.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s more he\u2019s coming in, he\u2019s tried the car, he says, \u2018I cannot drive this. This is just hopeless. I can\u2019t drive it in this way. You\u2019ve developed a car completely different from anything that I need to drive.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"FerrariPhoto by Emmanuele Ciancaglini\/Ciancaphoto Studio\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the impact of that and throughout the whole company and all the different departments and all the different engineering groups will be, \u2018If we\u2019re going to give him a car like he says that he needs, it\u2019s a completely different philosophy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole car, the aerodynamics of the car have been developed around our previous philosophy. We\u2019ve got to buy in. If we\u2019re going to take notice of Lewis, we\u2019ve got to buy in, and it\u2019s a complete radical rethink on everything.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s what Fred Vasseur has essentially done. And he has pushed against the grain in quite a few cases. And you can imagine there would be resistance because you\u2019ve got engineers there who were saying, \u2018Why are we taking notice of the slower driver? The faster driver says this is good.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSo yeah, there\u2019d be a natural reluctance there, that it would be Fred\u2019s job to galvanise everybody around what it is that he\u2019s trying to do to give Lewis what it is he\u2019s asking for.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton\u2019s life outside F1 from net worth to family<\/a><\/p>\n

What would Lewis Hamilton beating Charles Leclerc at 41 do for his F1 legacy? <\/p>\n

\"F1Photo by Gongora\/NurPhoto via Getty Images Lewis Hamilton hails Fred Vasseur as pivotal to his Ferrari revival<\/p>\n

Some Ferrari personnel thought Hamilton would not turn up in 2026<\/a> after his disastrous 2025 campaign. But the 41-year-old has turned a corner and looks like he is back to his best.<\/p>\n

Hamilton was critical in the design of the SF-26<\/a>, and it is taking him to race wins and puts him in a position to fight for the championship.<\/p>\n

All of this was possible as Ferrari finally started to listen to his feedback. It was unnatural, as the team are quite stubborn with their approach, but this new way of thinking has got them in a competitive spot.<\/p>\n

Hamilton thanks Vasseur for \u2018pulling through\u2019<\/a> and making the changes that he had been \u2018begging\u2019 for at Ferrari. Now that he has got what he wanted, Ferrari are starting to see the results that the seven-time champion <\/p>\n

Join Our Newsletter<\/p>\n

Receive exclusive F1 news and updates twice a week to your mailbox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us on Google Discover Fred Vasseur has taken a whole new approach to help Lewis Hamilton at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,826,813,816,13276,823,85],"class_list":["post-753380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-fred-vasseur","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753380","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=753380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}