Lewis Hamilton Crashed While Testing New Pedal Layout

Lewis Hamilton was testing a new pedal layout when he crashed at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya on Wednesday.

As part of the seven time world champion and Ferrari’s preparations for their first season together in 2025, Hamilton was driving a 2023 car when he hit the barriers in the fast final sector.

Ferrari played down the incident but offered no detail, with reports suggesting the bodywork and suspension was damaged at around 11am. Teammate Charles Leclerc’s planned afternoon running in the same car was cancelled.

According to La Repubblica and Sky Italia, Hamilton was testing a new pedal layout in the single seater after struggling with the standard setup on debut at Fiorano last week.

There have also been rumours that Hamilton is struggling to adjust to Ferrari’s Brembo braking system, having become so accustomed to the Carbon Industries materials over the course of his long tenure at Mercedes.

It was suggested Hamilton, 40, was asking if he could race Carbon Industries brakes in 2025, but Brembo and a source close to Ferrari denied it, the Spanish newspaper Marca reports.

The Italian source Virgilio Motori, meanwhile, says Hamilton has been working on perfecting the ‘trail braking’ technique which is better for Ferrari’s Brembo setup.

Many have criticised the new Ferrari-Hamilton collaboration, which resulted in the ousting of Carlos Sainz. “I read that Luca di Montezemolo is not very happy,” Russian F1 commentator Alexey Popov says. “(Flavio) Briatore has doubts, even (Toto) Wolff, although we saw both love and hate from him (Wolff) last year.

“Many will say ‘Your career is declining at the age of 40’. Yes, in qualifying last year, he lost a lot to (George) Russell. But knowing all year that he is leaving and Russell is staying – I don’t want to say Mercedes gave him bad parts, but maybe the Ferrari will be built more according to his wishes.”

Newly ousted F1 steward Johnny Herbert also commented on Hamilton’s move to Ferrari, which has attracted near-unprecedented levels of global coverage.

“From what Lewis has been saying so far, his motivation is definitely not lacking,” said Herbert.

“I could probably criticise him a bit and say there have been more mistakes from him than I’ve seen before, but I think the situation at Mercedes didn’t help. It’s down to Fred Vasseur to give him the car that he can actually achieve in.”

Prior to Wednesday’s incident, Leclerc was quoted as saying by Sky Italia: “I am very confident because we are doing everything well at the moment and, as a team, we are much more solid.

“But Formula 1 is a relative sport and we can only know what we are doing – we don’t know if Red Bull or McLaren have found something very special for their cars. So it’s very difficult to say anything about it.

“We just focus on ourselves and try to do the best job possible,” Leclerc added.