Charles Leclerc has looked slightly \u201clost\u201d this year alongside team-mate Lewis Hamilton, according to former F1 engineer Rob Smedley.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Leclerc and Hamilton were paired together at Ferrari last year when the latter opted to bring the curtain down on his career with Mercedes.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
After the seven-time champion struggled for form throughout the 2025 season, this year has marked a considerable step forward under fresh technical regulations.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Hamilton currently sits second in the drivers’ championship with a 31-point advantage over Leclerc.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Leclerc has long been seen as Ferrari’s main man given his long history with the team – but Smedley believes there has been a shift this year.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the first time in a long time, with Charles, where his team-mate has had, as it happened in that mid period of the first half, a significant upper hand,\u201d Smedley told the High Performance Racing podcast.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cCharles wasn’t happy with the car. I know that they changed things on the car, they changed components around the braking system, the types of material and stuff like that.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it felt like he was just slightly lost for a driver of his experience and how good he is.\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Despite the troubling period for Leclerc, Smedley’s podcast co-host Otmar Szafnauer does not believe an intervention is needed, speaking from his experience as an F1 team boss.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
When asked how he would approach the situation, Szafnauer replied: \u201cNo, leave him alone. It’s the ‘dead guys at Fidelity’ thing. I would not have a conversation, but be supportive.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cLewis at the beginning of the year, and I’m not speaking from facts, just the feeling I get, was a little bit more ahead of Leclerc than he is now.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cCharles has stepped it up in the last two towards Lewis.\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc has looked slightly \u201clost\u201d this year alongside team-mate Lewis Hamilton, according to former F1 engineer Rob…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-849216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849216","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=849216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}