Ferrari Urged to Support Hamilton in Title Fight
The debate that has stalked Ferrari since Lewis Hamilton walked through the door has flared again. After a spiky Dutch Grand Prix and a stream of frustrated radio messages, former Ferrari engineer Rob Smedley has made his position clear: if Maranello want real say in this year’s title race, they have to nail their colours to Hamilton’s side of the garage.
At Zandvoort, Hamilton ran an alternative strategy and felt he had the pace to attack. Stuck behind Charles Leclerc, he demanded over the radio that the team intervene and order the Monegasque out of the way. Ferrari hesitated. The moment passed. The argument did not.
Smedley, who knows the internal politics and pressures of Ferrari as well as anyone, didn’t dance around the issue on the High Performance Racing Podcast. As he put it, everyone in red ultimately serves one cause.
“As hard as that is for Charles and the team that sits on that side of the garage with Charles and all the rest of it, they all work for Ferrari,” he said, cutting to the heart of the matter: personal loyalties and intra-team balance cannot override the wider objective.
For Smedley, Hamilton’s form provides the answer. “Lewis has had the better run and done the better job. And I think if they're going to steal points from Mercedes, they're going to do that as a team.” The message is blunt: when the car is good enough to hurt Mercedes, Ferrari must be ruthless in how they deploy it.
They know they do not arrive at every circuit with the class of the field. “They haven't got the best car consistently, but they have on occasions got the best car, and they're going to make it count then, and they're going to make sure that Lewis wins,” Smedley argued. On the days when the machinery falls short, the priority remains the same – extract every possible point for Hamilton.
On paper, the numbers back up the urgency. Hamilton sits level on points with his former Mercedes teammate George Russell, but both trail championship leader Kimi Antonelli by 59 points. That is not an insurmountable gulf, yet it is large enough that any internal hesitation could prove fatal to Ferrari’s ambitions.
For Smedley, this isn’t about romance or sentiment. “This is just about doing what is the sensible thing for the team and trying to maximize Ferrari's position in the world championship,” he concluded. In his view, clarity of hierarchy is not a luxury. It is a requirement if Ferrari are serious about shaping the destination of this year’s title rather than watching it decided elsewhere.
Kelly Piquet’s heartfelt note to daughter Penelope draws support from Verstappen
Away from the noise of team orders and championship arithmetic, Kelly Piquet opened a window into her private world. On social media, the partner of Max Verstappen shared an emotional message to her daughter Penelope, reflecting on a turbulent spell since the girl’s recent birthday.
Piquet did not spell out what had unfolded over the past month, but the tone of her words made clear it had been a period of reflection and challenge. The post dwelt on what motherhood has taught her – lessons in patience, protection, and the quiet strength required to guide a child through life under a public gaze.
She then addressed Penelope directly, with a promise that cut through the usual gloss of social media. “My P, I will always listen to you, stand up for you, protect your gentleness, and remind you that your feelings matter. I hope your seventh year brings you the peace, freedom, and carefree joy that every little girl deserves.”
The response from within the paddock, including support from Verstappen, underlined how tightly intertwined the sport’s public theatre and private lives have become. Titles, points, and strategy calls dominate the headlines, but in the background, families absorb the strain of a relentless calendar and an unforgiving spotlight.
On one side of the sport, Ferrari are being told to make hard, clinical choices in pursuit of a championship. On the other, a mother asks for nothing more than peace and joy for her seven-year-old daughter. The same season, the same circus, two very different kinds of stakes.
