Lewis Hamilton has reportedly submitted a number of requests for Project 678, Ferrari’s F1 2026 car, as he seeks to get his career back on track next season.
It comes just weeks after the seven-time World Champion revealed that he has sent a series of “documents” to Maranello proposing a variety of changes to team.
Hamilton has had a disappointing start to his Ferrari career following his high-profile move from Mercedes last winter, failing to score a podium across his first 14 appearances for his new team.
The 40-year-old has struggled to adjust to his new surroundings after a highly successful 12-year stint at Mercedes.
Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com at last month’s Belgian Grand Prix, Hamilton revealed that he has submitted a number of “documents” to Ferrari in an effort to turn his situation around.
Hamilton went on to explain that his willingness to “go the extra mile” at Ferrari is driven by a refusal to follow in the footsteps of Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel, established champions who failed to win the title with the Scuderia.
And a report from Italy has shed more light on the nature of Hamilton’s requests as he strives for a more successful F1 2026 season under Formula 1’s new rules.
Respected publication La Gazzetta dello Sport has claimed that Hamilton’s “documents” concern not only changes to the car, but such details as working methods, communication between different departments at Maranello and the execution of race weekends.
It is said that chief among his concerns is the car’s braking system with Hamilton still struggling to adapt to the differences in Ferrari’s engine braking compared to Mercedes.
As reported by PlanetF1.com, Hamilton has struggled with the Ferrari’s brakes since his maiden test with the team at Fiorano in January.
He trialled a revised set of Brembo braking materials – including discs and pads – for the first time at the Belgian Grand Prix, where he suffered a strange spin at the Bus Stop chicane in sprint qualifying.
It is thought that Ferrari’s engine braking system, combined with his unfamiliarity with the new Brembo materials, resulted in his spin, which left him 18th on the sprint grid at Spa.
La Gazzetta dello Sport reports that Ferrari’s engine braking – which has a “clearer and more evident intervention” than he was accustomed to at Mercedes – remains a “complication” for Hamilton, who is yet to fully optimise it.
Although adjustments have been made to make him more comfortable, it is said that specific characteristics of the Ferrari engine braking mean Hamilton continues to lack the feel he requires during deceleration episodes around a lap.
As such, Hamilton has reportedly requested information about Ferrari’s F1 2026 power unit so the issue can be resolved for good.
Ferrari’s move to a pull-rod front suspension for the F1 2025 season has also had unforeseen consequences, improving precision of the steering on corner entry but creating understeer in more technical corners.
PlanetF1.com reported following last month’s British Grand Prix that Hamilton and team-mate Charles Leclerc had raised concerns over the car’s handling through the high-speed corners at Silverstone, with Ferrari working on a minor upgrade to the power steering to resolve the issue.
Leclerc had previously aired worries about the problem at the high-speed Jeddah circuit in Saudi Arabia in April.
The report claims that Hamilton has been attempting to combat the issue by setting up his car with higher front-end load, which has had the knock-on effect of bringing “considerable steering sensitivity.”
Hamilton had reportedly been keen to try a wide ranger of setup choices in the simulator to try and combat the problem, but Ferrari’s “limited number of basic” setup options in the simulator has led to him trialling solutions in a real-world environment instead.
This, it is said, has resulted in Hamilton running a mix of bars, shock absorbers and wing configurations that are not optimal for the characteristics of the Ferrari SF-25.
Hamilton’s choices have seen him “sometimes deviate substantially” from the setups of Leclerc, now in his seventh full season with Ferrari, who has tended to opt for more “consistent” configurations.
Hamilton previously became renowned for running a number of so-called setup ‘experiments’ across the final years of his Mercedes career as he tried to get a tune out of a series of underperforming cars.
The differences in setups has come as a surprise to Ferrari given that it was “almost taken for granted” in pre-season that Hamilton and Leclerc, with similar driving styles, would remain aligned in their demands from the car.
The lack of a shared direction between the drivers could jeopardise the work on Project 678, which is currently in a state of “advanced development” in Maranello, given the pressure to ace aerodynamic and chassis choices at the start of a new rules cycle in F1 2026.
