The behind-closed-doors nature of Ferrari's Barcelona Formula 1 test means details of Lewis Hamilton's crash this week are few and far between.
It has been widely reported in Italian media that Hamilton crashed late in the morning, towards the end of his allotted half-day of running, and at the end of the lap - maybe even at the last corner. No specific cause was named, although driver error is the most likely and fits with Ferrari playing down the incident.
Crashing is an occupational hazard in testing and, though not ideal, is something that can happen as a driver starts to understand and even cross over the limit in a car that is new to them. Hamilton has gone through this before, coincidentally crashing in the tests that preceded his first F1 season with McLaren in 2007 and again with Mercedes in 2013.
When the car in question is the 2023 Ferrari, the possibility of a shunt also increases slightly. It had a very specific flaw that could easily bite a driver still unfamiliar with the car through the flat out, high-speed final turn at Barcelona.
In fact, were Hamilton to have this kind of incident in any ground-effect era Ferrari, it would almost certainly be the 2023 car: the least successful so far, and with the worst traits.
Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc had a real challenge driving that car consistently, as evidenced by it only winning one race all year (Sainz in the Singapore Grand Prix, although that was that season's only non-Red Bull win).
As The Race's Mark Hughes wrote at the end of 2023, Ferrari had continued that year with the fat-fronted out-washing sidepod concept which had worked well enough to be fully competitive with Red Bull in the first part of 2022.
But as Ferrari attempted to squeeze more aero load from that out-washing, the airflow could no longer adequately feed both the underfloor and the floor sides, leading to a suspected sudden detachment at high speeds which gave the car an unpredictable rear-end snappiness in fast corners. Particularly in crosswinds.
The first major upgrade to the car came at Barcelona. The sidepods were lengthened and narrowed in an attempt to make that out-washed flow less stall-prone by asking it to make a less extreme arc. But the trait remained and even Leclerc, a driver with a preference for an oversteer balance, found he couldn't properly commit to fast corners.
Further tweaks were made but the car's form peaked and troughed primarily according to track layout. Sainz asked to try out a different set-up which essentially got him around the unpredictable rear by inducing a deliberate understeer, aiding that Singapore win. Then a final upgrade late in the year, a new floor designed to improve the aero efficiency, brought an unanticipated taming of the rear.
This is the version of the car Hamilton will have driven this week, but while it was improved its underlying traits were never completely eradicated.
Explaining that is not intended to be read as an excuse for Hamilton, as it is down to the driver to mitigate the crash risk of the car they are driving even if it is capricious. But it may serve as an interesting example of the kind of specific challenges Hamilton must adapt to; if anyone thought he would leave the worst of the ground-effect cars behind him at Mercedes, this will have been an eye-opener!
It also speaks to the limited value of these old-car tests. After all, Ferrari's more compliant and successful 2024 car was, very deliberately, quite different to its predecessor. As such, the 2025 Ferrari - the SF-25 - that Hamilton will race this year will be intended as an evolution of the 2024 car.
What he has driven at Fiorano (briefly) and now Barcelona is not super representative of the handling characteristics he can expect this year. It will, hopefully anyway, be the worst Ferrari Hamilton has to drive. This has always been a more useful exercise in easing his way into other differences like seat position and comfort, brake feel, communication with his race engineer, and details like Ferrari's systems and steering wheel settings.
And though Hamilton will get behind the wheel again next week, this time in a version of the much better 2024 car, that will also not be as straightforward as it seems - for that test is to aid Pirelli’s 2026 tyre developments, so the car will be modified to run with different performance characteristics closer to what is expected next year.
Ultimately, Hamilton is only learning what he can before more meaningful work finally begins in the Bahrain pre-season test with the 2025 car, which will bring its own traits and limitations for Hamilton to understand.
