Ferrari accused of breaking golden rule for Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc | F1 | Sport

Ferrari have been accused of breaking the ‘number one rule of engineering’ with a move that has hampered both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc. The Scuderia had plenty of optimism heading into the new season, with early signs suggesting they’d responded well to the new engine regulations.

They have recorded podium positions in three of the four races so far this season, but there have been moments where Ferrari’s drivers could’ve and probably should’ve delivered much more. In an attempt to combat that, Ferrari have ushered in 11 new upgrades to the car, but former IndyCar driver James Hinchliffe believes it could work against the Italian constructor.

Speaking on the F1 Nation podcast, Hinchcliffe explained Ferrari brought too many changes to their SF-26 in Miami, making it difficult to isolate which parts worked and which did not. He said: “This is the number one rule of engineering is make one change at a time, so you can isolate what’s actually better and worse.

“They don’t have that freedom, with no testing and a single practice session. You’re bolting on 11 or 12 different components, and it really makes the job for the engineers difficult. It really makes the job for the drivers difficult to isolate what’s helping, what’s changing, what’s hurting. This, that or the other. And all of these things work together, nothing is working in isolation on a Formula 1 car.”

Before adding: “It’s massively challenging to bring such a large list of upgrades. So whether or not they maximised the potential of the car over the weekend, maybe, maybe not. I think they were doing a great job of maximising the car they had for the race until the spin at the end.”

Meanwhile, McLaren earned plenty of praise for the way they’ve introduced upgrades during the enforced spring break. Speaking on the work done by the reigning Constructors’ Championship holders, Hinchcliffe said: “It’s one of those sneaky things that you could see masterminded by Andrea Stella. He’s one of those guys that would like, ‘Yeah, we could have had all this done, we could delay these few parts, actually give ourselves another couple days to develop them’.

“And every engineer will tell you every extra day that you can develop it before you create it, before you produce it, could find a little bit more performance. And then the knock-on effect is we can do a little bit better job of isolating what’s really performing well.”