Former Ferrari engineer Rob Smedley says Ferrari\u2019s failed Miami upgrade blitz will be \u2018soul-destroying\u2019 for the Scuderia after 11 new parts failed to close the gap to Mercedes \u2014 and McLaren still came out ahead.<\/p>\n
Now Ferrari\u2019s technical team has to reverse engineer every one of those upgrades to establish which of the 11 didn\u2019t work \u2013 and if it\u2019s even just one.<\/p>\n
Ferraris failed 11-part Miami upgrade sparks \u2018soul-destroying\u2019 warning<\/p>\n
Want more PlanetF1.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google<\/a> to your favourites list for news you can trust<\/p>\n While Ferrari\u2019s rivals opted to space out their updates, or in Mercedes\u2019 case hold off until Canada, Ferrari went all in at the Miami Grand Prix as Formula 1 returned to the track after its unscheduled spring break.<\/p>\n Amongst the changes, the team introduced a new floor and diffuser, while also revising the \u2018Macarena\u2019 rear wing to improve drag reduction and focus on increasing load in cornering mode.<\/p>\n The weekend started strong with Charles Leclerc topping the timesheet in the extended FP1 by almost three-tenths ahead of Max Verstappen. But that was the team\u2019s sole P1 of the weekend.<\/p>\n Although Leclerc finished the Sprint in third place, Ferrari<\/a> was booted off the grand prix podium by McLaren, crossing the line fifth and seventh.<\/p>\n 15 seconds down on Mercedes race winner George Russell at the opening race of the season in Australia, Leclerc was 40s behind Kimi Antonelli on the line in Miami. He was later penalised 20s for repeated off-track moments on the final lap.<\/p>\n Although Ferrari claims the updates were a step in the right direction, that step wasn\u2019t big enough to take the fight to Mercedes.<\/p>\n F1 2026: The season\u2019s winners and losers<\/p>\n The results of the F1 2026 championship <\/a><\/p>\n The F1 2026 Drivers\u2019 and Constructors\u2019 Championship standings<\/a><\/p>\n Jake Humphrey posed the question on the High Performance Racing podcast: \u201cI think this upgrade game is interesting. Can I talk about Ferrari, the fact they brought 11 upgrades to Miami and didn\u2019t look any closer to the fastest car? I wonder how that feels in a team when that goes on?\u201d<\/p>\n Former Ferrari race engineer Smedley says the team will be gutted as it now has to reverse engineer the updates to figure out which part didn\u2019t work as expected.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s slightly soul-destroying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt starts from a technical point of view, it starts essentially this negative loop that you\u2019ve then got to [dissect]. What did you bring? What\u2019s working? What\u2019s not working?<\/p>\n \u201cIf it\u2019s not correlating, as in the wind tunnel or your simulation tools are not matching what\u2019s on track, you\u2019ve then got to do this whole reverse engineering process where you go back to the tunnel, and that holds up all of the development in the tunnel that you should be doing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer picked up: \u201cThere are two things that happen. You have finite resources, and now you\u2019re putting those resources on correlation, not making the car go faster. And the reason you\u2019re doing that is because if you don\u2019t have good correlation, it\u2019s only luck that you make the car go faster, right?<\/p>\n \u201cSo you\u2019ve got to fix that, if that\u2019s what their issue is, first and foremost. But the same engineers who would be looking at on-track performance are now looking at correlation issues.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are some different teams that have different groups, but when I was at Aston, Racing Point and Force India, we had a pretty big APG group, which is an aeroperformance group, and they were the people who would look at correlation, mainly. Not so much development but correlation.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I went to Alpine, they had like three. That was one of the things I thought to myself as not being enough. <\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019ve got perfect correlation, no problem. But if you wake up and you don\u2019t and you only have three people in APG, you\u2019re going to struggle.<\/p>\n \u201cThen what happens is just what I described. You get your aerodynamicist looking at correlation, and now they\u2019re not looking at making the car go faster. So it is a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Szafnauer revealed that prior to the track action in Miami, Mercedes\u2019 trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin had told him that the Brackley squad was wary of Ferrari\u2019s challenge going into the weekend.<\/p>\n Szafnauer, though, was adamant it was always going to be McLaren who would be Mercedes\u2019 biggest rival.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a conversation with the chief engineer at Mercedes,\u201d he explained. \u201cThis was on Friday, and I said, \u2018you know Andrew\u2019 \u2013 Andrew and I started the same day at British American Racing in 1998 in August, 98 so I know him well, we shared an office \u2013 I said, \u2018I think you guys are going to win this championship, but McLaren are going to be your biggest challengers\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd he said, \u2018I think you\u2019re wrong\u2019. He told me all the reasons. He said, \u2018I think it\u2019ll be Ferrari who are be our biggest challengers\u2019. <\/p>\n \u201cMaybe that\u2019s because this was before we ran, and he saw the 11 upgrades. <\/p>\n \u201cBut as it turned out, I think McLaren soon will leapfrog Ferrari in the championship. They\u2019re still behind, but they had a strong weekend McLaren. Strong car. Big upgrades.\u201d<\/p>\n Mercedes, though, has yet to put its big upgraded package on the track with the team holding off on that until Canada.<\/p>\n \u201cThe other thing to note, from an upgrade perspective, Mercedes didn\u2019t bring anything,\u201d Szafnauer continued. \u201cThey\u2019re bringing it to Canada. So let\u2019s see what happens after Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? 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