Rob Smedley says 95% of Ferrari’s employees don’t ‘understand’ how to win a championship

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Former Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley has outlined the main problem within the Scuderia that is preventing them from winning world titles.

Smedley, 52, joined Ferrari as a test team engineer in 2004 before becoming Felipe Massa’s race engineer from 2006 to 2013.

During Smedley’s stint with the team, Ferrari won three constructors’ titles and two drivers’ titles.

However, since 2008, Ferrari have struggled to sustain a prolonged challenge at the top, with the likes of Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren overtaking them in the F1 pecking order.

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Rob Smedley says 95% of Ferrari’s employees don’t ‘understand’ how to win a championship

Speaking on the recent episode of the High Performance Racing podcast, Smedley claimed that ‘self-doubt’ is creeping into Ferrari and that only 5% or 10% of people within the team ‘understand’ how to win titles.

Smedley explained: “The further away you are from winning world titles, the harder it becomes. That’s why, when you see the resurgence of Red Bull from 2021, we’ll probably now see a resurgence of Mercedes, because they’ve got some not-too-distant knowledge of how to do it.

“They’ll be 10%, 5% of the Ferrari team who were there when we were knocking out the park, those guys understand how to win. But when you have people who have only won one or two races, it becomes difficult. It’s relentless and hard.

“When you have a bunch of guys who know how to do it and can continue to do it, that makes a big difference.

“When you’re in the position of Ferrari or any team that hasn’t won it for a long, long time, the self-belief is not high. There’s too much self-doubt.

“However much you talk externally about, you know, we think we can win this, we think we can win world titles or whatever.

“You only need that 2% or 3% of self-doubt, you know, to exist within your organisation and you won’t do it.”

Can Ferrari still win an F1 title in 2026?

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READ MORE: David Coulthard tells Lewis Hamilton the one problem he can’t solve at Ferrari

Despite a promising start to the 2026 F1 season, Ferrari were handed a firm reality check in Miami after their 11 upgrades failed to take the team further forward.

In the end, Lewis Hamilton finished sixth, with Charles Leclerc eighth following a late penalty.

Ahead of this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix, Smedley revealed Ferrari are searching for answers over their Miami upgrade package.

He added: “I spoke to a couple of people. It’s what I talked about with Mercedes, that if you bring a whole package, some of it will work and some won’t.

“I think the problem is, where their heads have been at post Miami is what has worked and what hasn’t, they think that, together, it delivered, but it just didn’t deliver at the level they expected. They didn’t make a step forward.

“But the tunnel said it should, so then you are looking at the net gain effect, it wasn’t anywhere near, so have we put parts on that are making the car slower?”