Hamilton preaches caution over Ferrari F1 upgrade that felt “the same as before”

Lewis Hamilton says his new Ferrari rear suspension felt “the same as before” during the Formula 1 team’s filming day, and expects it will take time to see significant benefits.

As revealed by Autosport, Hamilton and team-mate Charles Leclerc used the team’s second and final 200km filming day in Mugello to trial a new rear suspension geometry earlier this month.

The new suspension should make the SF-25 less sensitive to ride height changes, opening up useful set-up options to improve the narrow operating window of the car and its Pirelli tyres, and if successful it should therefore make it easier for Ferrari to fully exploit its 2025 car’s potential on different circuit types.

In conjunction with the new suspension geometry, which features lower wishbones, the team also refreshed the various fairings and winglets to improve aerodynamic performance.

“This revision of the rear suspension geometry triggered a re-optimisation of wishbone fairings as well as lower and upper winglet cascades, with the aim to maximise aerodynamic efficiency,” Ferrari detailed in its FIA upgrade document that is distributed on Friday mornings. It also added a new rear wing flap option for lower downforce circuits like Spa.

When asked about Ferrari’s suspension upgrade, Hamilton played down any immediate impact and suspected it would take the Scuderia time to unlock the full range of benefits, as he felt no difference on the team’s simulator yet.

Asked how the suspension felt in Mugello, he replied: “The same as it did the weeks before. It was a photo shoot day, basically. So we did like 10 laps or whatever – 14 laps of filming. It was not a test.

“We’ll get to test the suspension [on Friday], and I’m sure there’s going to be learnings from it. We’ll figure out how to fine-tune it and try to extract performance from it. On the simulator there’s no difference, but I’m sure across different circuits, perhaps there’ll be benefits.

He added: “For me, the positive thing is arriving at the filming day where you see that new bits are coming. Because in general, we had an upgraded floor in Bahrain and then it was quite some time before we got another upgrade – I think it was Austria. And pace-wise it wasn’t necessarily what I thought we would have.

“I was just really happy to see that there clearly is a big push back at the factory. There are a lot of changes, and then to see the results of those changes takes time. So I was just really grateful to see that we got new parts. We’ll try and put them to use this weekend.”

Hamilton acknowledged introducing the new parts at Spa’s sprint weekend will make it harder to fully exploit the new suspension this weekend.

“Very, very difficult. We don’t have a lot of time, so you need to double up,” the seven-time world champion added. “You need to make sure you get as much information from both cars.

“In terms of fine-tuning the car, it’s highly unlikely we’re going to fully optimise it during this weekend. It’ll probably be something we’re optimising over the next few weekends.”