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Former Formula 1 driver Jolyon Palmer believes Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton are failing to capitalize on Mercedes' rare moments of weakness, describing their string of errors as "quite sloppy."
After six victories in the first half of the season, Mercedes' Andrea Kimi Antonelli holds a 50-point lead over the seven-time champion, who sits in second place, with 12 races remaining.
Palmer insists that Ferrari has squandered crucial opportunities to close that gap. During an episode of the "F1 Nation" podcast, alongside host Tom Clarkson and former IndyCar driver James Hinchcliffe, Palmer highlighted the reliability issues with Antonelli's car at the British Grand Prix as a major chance the Maranello team missed.
"Ferrari just needs to keep the pressure on and see what happens. But I'm a bit disappointed with them in recent races because I think they were given this chance with some reliability issues for Kimi," Palmer explained.
"The wheel cover issue at Silverstone was a real stroke of luck for Ferrari. They were going to lose that race, and in the end, they managed to win and significantly reduce Kimi's lead. And then they go and incur all these penalties."
"You have Lewis's false start at Silverstone, simply because he moved his hand too quickly. That's quite sloppy. You also have the instance where he switched off the pit lane speed limiter a fraction of a second too early in Hungary. It's hard to argue that isn't quite sloppy. And then you have the biggest mistake of all – the impeding penalty in Hungary. My goodness, that's so sloppy from the race engineer at that moment, and perhaps a little bit from Lewis too."
"And these three penalties might have cost them a few points, obviously, but also a bit of momentum and some of that pressure on Kimi. So they need to eliminate them."
He added that Hamilton "is driving brilliantly," but might be lacking concentration.
"Lewis is driving brilliantly. The fact that he's even matching or ahead of Charles in terms of pace much of the time shows what a great turnaround he's achieved," Palmer said.
"It's really hard to compare to his glory years at Mercedes; the competition is so different. The environment is so different. I think we're seeing some of his best performances ever."
"That's why I'm disappointed with the unnecessary penalties, because his driving level is actually incredibly high right now. He's really adapted to these regulations and the opportunity that has opened up for him. But then these errors come, which are not skill-related. That's the silly part. It's a kind of lack of concentration, or I don't know, attention or something else in him and the race engineer. And they just failed."
"If Ferrari wants to win this championship, we've mentioned team orders before, and the fact that they'll need to maximize every point – they are very far from doing that in the last few races."
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