Juan Pablo Montoya says Ferrari missed obvious issue in Lewis Hamilton onboard footage last year

Follow us on Google Discover

Juan Pablo Montoya thinks Lewis Hamilton’s 2025 engineers didn’t understand what was going wrong for him last year.

Ferrari made changes to Hamilton’s engineering team for 2026, with Carlo Santi taking over from Riccardo Adami. Cedric Grosjean also arrived from McLaren.

While Santi was originally seen as an interim appointment – perhaps before Grosjean took over – Hamilton has expressed wholehearted satisfaction with his work so far. As a result, Ferrari aren’t planning any further engineering changes on his side of the garage.

What is the BIGGEST reason for Lewis Hamilton’s turnaround at Ferrari this year?

Comment

Like or Comment

Have your say Sign-in now for free

Juan Pablo Montoya: Ferrari couldn’t see that Lewis Hamilton didn’t trust the car

In an interview on the Pit Lane Torque podcast, Montoya said it was clear in Hamilton’s footage onboard that he simply didn’t ‘trust’ the 2025 car.

His theory is that Adami and Hamilton’s old engineering team simply expected the seven-time world champion to adapt, but the problem was fundamental. He didn’t score a single podium across the 24 races, a career first.

Hamilton had a significant input into Ferrari’s handling philosophy for their 2026 car, which has been cited as a key factor in his transformation.

Give us your podium prediction for the Austrian Grand Prix this weekend 👇

Comment

Like or Comment

Have your say Sign-in now for free

“I said it last year,” Montoya recalled. “You could see how uncomfortable he looked in the car when you looked at the onboards. When he was turning, he had no confidence in the car, he didn’t trust the car.

“When you’re trying to push a car and you don’t trust a car, it’s really difficult to go fast. I don’t think the group of engineers he had last year understood that.

“Their European way of doing things is ‘this is our baseline, this is how we do things, you need to adapt to it’, but if adapting to it means you can’t drive it, it’s a big struggle.”

Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari gamble has ‘opened the eyes’ of rival teams

Only three months after his long-awaited first podium, Hamilton bagged his maiden victory at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix last time out.

Hamilton opted for an aggressive three-stop strategy as the cars around him stayed on a two-stop, a gamble which didn’t play out fully due to a late virtual safety car.

But Mercedes believe Hamilton would have won the race regardless, and Montoya thinks his formidable lap times showed other teams just how valuable a tyre offset can be.

“It’s interesting that Ferrari only went three stops on Lewis’ car,” he said. “I think they went for broke with Lewis, and Lewis probably told them, ‘I don’t care, if it doesn’t work and we finish fifth, might as well.’

“This will open the eyes of a lot of eyes strategists, ‘Oh my god.’ When you’re racing people and you have a big tyre advantage, it’s much easier to pass people, and then what people would consider traffic on strategies, the amount of time lost is minimised a lot.

“If you’re running the same strategy and you go, ‘Oh, we’re going to go two laps longer,’ it doesn’t change anything, but if the lap difference is 10 or 15 laps, in a place where you’re degging three tenths a lap, it’s not even a question. The guys can’t even block.”