Rob Smedley sounds alarm on "slightly soul-destroying" Ferrari F1 upgrades

Motorsport photo

Former Formula 1 engineer Rob Smedley has branded Ferrari's Miami Grand Prix upgrades as "slightly soul-destroying" after McLaren saw a larger boost in performance than the Maranello outfit.

After a strong start to 2026, including Lewis Hamilton's first podium finish with Ferrari at the Chinese Grand Prix, McLaren closed the gap to the Fred Vasseur-led team with second and third-place finishes at the Miami Grand Prix with substantial upgrades. Ferrari now has only a 16-point lead over the Woking outfit.

Speaking on the High Performance Racing podcast alongside former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer, Smedley responded when asked how disappointing it would be for Ferrari to come under threat from McLaren after introducing upgrades.

"100%. It's slightly soul-destroying because it starts from a technical point of view. It starts essentially this negative loop that you've then got to [dissect]. What did you bring? What's working? What's not working?

"If it's not correlating, as in the wind tunnel or your simulation tools are not matching what's on track, you've 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."

Szafnauer added: "There are two things that happen. You have finite resources, and now you're putting those resources on correlation, not making the car go faster. And the reason you're doing that is because if you don't have good correlation, it's only luck that you make the car go faster, right?

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Lando Norris, McLaren