Reports this week claimed that Ferrari have adjusted the cockpit position of their F1 2025 car – codenamed Project 677 – for Lewis Hamilton’s first season with the team.
And F1 pundit Martin Brundle has lifted the lid on the importance of seating position in an F1 car, claiming drivers can feel “trapped” if it isn’t right.
Ferrari reportedly adjust Project 677 cockpit position for Lewis Hamilton arrival.
It emerged this week that Project 677 has passed the FIA’s mandatory crash tests ahead of the new season in a key milestone in the development of Ferrari‘s F1 2025 car.
It coincided with the arrival of Hamilton, who officially joined Ferrari from Mercedes on January 1.
A number of design details related to Project 677 have surfaced over recent months with the development of the car overseen by chassis technical director Loic Serra, who worked closely with Hamilton at Mercedes until last season.
Analysis: Lewis Hamilton joins Ferrari from Mercedes for F1 2025.
A return to a pullrod front suspension for the first time in 2015 – seeing Ferrari follow in the footsteps of McLaren and Red Bull – is expected, with the Scuderia also moving the cockpit further back for F1 2025.
Cockpit positioning proved to be a major irritation for Hamilton in his penultimate season with Mercedes in 2023, with the seven-time World Champion complaining that he was sitting too far forward during a second successive winless campaign.
Speaking at that year’s Australian Grand Prix, he said: “We sit closer to the front wheels than all the other drivers. Our cockpit is too close to the front.
“When you’re driving, you feel like you’re sitting on the front wheels, which is one of the worst feelings to feel when you’re driving a car.
“If you were driving your car at home, and you put the wheels right underneath your legs, you would not be happy when you’re approaching the roundabout.
“It just really changes the attitude of the car and how you perceive its movement and it makes it harder to predict compared to when you’re further back and you’re sitting closer, more centre.
“It’s just something I’ve really struggled with.”
“I listened to the team and that was the direction that they said that we should go. Had I known the feeling that I would have in it, it wouldn’t have happened.
“And it has to change for the future, 100 per cent.”
It is unclear if Hamilton, who was last month reported to have paid a secret visit to Ferrari’s Maranello factory despite still being under contract at Mercedes at the time, has had any direct influence on the decision to adjust the cockpit position for F1 2025.
Appearing in a fan Q&A session, Brundle described the feeling of being “trapped” in modern F1 cars following the introduction of such innovations as the HANS device and halo.
And he insisted that “tiny” details like the position of the cockpit can have a big impact on driver comfort and performance.
He said: “Seating position is everything.
“Most of my era of drivers, if you survived, you limped because you smash your legs up because they used to put the driver right at the front of the car to counterbalance the weight of the engine and gearbox behind you.
“Not much thought was given to safety, so if you crashed, you were pretty much going to break something – your feet, your ankles or your legs as I certainly did.
“So, it is important. I’ve driven, for example, in [Ayrton] Senna’s beautiful black-and-gold Lotus Renault turbo – and it’s wonderful because you can see everything in front of you, but it’s not very safe.
“I recently drove one of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes and you’re buried inside the car with the halo and the headrest and the HANS device around your neck.
“And I didn’t actually feel particularly safe – I felt more trapped.
“But I think the drivers these days get used to that and feel quite safe, so it’s what it’s about – we don’t want to see people killed or badly injured in the name of sport.
“But I do agree with him – especially now.
“The cars are so long, they are much longer than the cars I used to race in Formula 1, they are probably closer in size to the cars I used to race in Le Mans”
“But it’s the pedals. It’s the steering wheel, it’s the feedback from the car on how straight everything is that that matters as well.
“So I’ll give you a good example: Before we had a spare car and the drivers used to share the car – not three cars for two drivers in Formula 1.
‘And on the Sunday morning you’d got in the spare car in the warm up and give it a run then get in back in your car.’
“Technically they are the same and teams would not like coming in and saying that this car feels different to my car because it does!
And even if you have 5 km/h higher top speed you do feel the difference when you’re negotiating a corner at 322 km/h.
“So everything matters when you’re driving a racing car especially with those kind of loads going on.”
Project 677 is to be initiated on February 19, the day after F1 first-ever team collective season-launch event involving all teams in London.
It will then go through three days of testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, February 26 to February 28 before the F1 2025 season proper kicks off at the Australian Grand Prix on March 16.