Rob Smedley worked for Ferrari for almost ten years, including from 2006 to 2013. He was Felipe Massa’s racing engineer. Now he works with Formula 1 as a technical advisor, and by participating in the F1 Nation podcast of the championship’s official website, he shared his views on the most important news of the past few days.
Of course we are talking about Lewis Hamilton’s upcoming switch to Ferrari. Smedley worked at the Scuderia during the period when another famous racer, Fernando Alonso, arrived there. However, neither the Spaniard nor Sebastian Vettel, the four-time world champion who replaced him in 2015, managed to win titles behind the wheel of red cars. But Smedley remembered that times were different then.
“I think Lewis is such a high level professional that he will contribute to the team’s performance in all areas,” says Rob. – It should probably also be noted that there is a difference with the period when I worked at Ferrari and Fernando played there: it lies in the fact that in recent years this team has shown its potential more and more clearly.
Last year she was also one of the few who managed to stay ahead of Red Bull at times, especially in qualifying. But there are areas where the Scuderia needs to tighten up if it really wants to challenge for championship victories.
That said, Lewis could certainly be a bit of a catalyst for the team to surround him or rally around him and Charles Leclerc. Sometimes all you need to do is give a Formula 1 team a little help and this will lead to very significant positive changes, even if they only increase by one or two percent.
The same thing happened with Red Bull after a not so successful period: once you start winning races, it’s hard to stop. For this to happen, some special events have to happen: a split in the team, the departure of key riders or something like that. And then the period of dominance ends.
But when you taste the taste of winning, and you have people like Lewis in your team, who are real winning machines, who are always focused on success every weekend, then it is difficult to lose with people like that. I don’t rule out that this is exactly what we will see in the case of Ferrari.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
