Lewis Hamilton is officially back after that brilliant first victory for Ferrari at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, and there is another reason for his army of fans to be very excited.
The 41-year-old has really banished the memories of that awful first season at Maranello by coming back strongly in 2026.
Second-place finishes in Canada and Monaco hinted strongly that the seven-time world champion and his legendary team were finally on the right track, and last Sunday in Spain proved it beyond any doubt.
Hamilton was a comfortable winner as he claimed his first victory of the red, but it was the manner in which the weekend unfolded which was most impressive.
On Sunday Ferrari managed to deliver the car and race strategy Hamilton needed, and he capitalised with a peerless performance to take top spot on the podium.
But perhaps the MOST impressive part of the whole weekend had come 24 hours earlier in qualifying, as Hamilton claimed a front row spot, just 0.064 seconds behind pole sitter George Russell of Mercedes. If you look even deeper still, there was something even more encouraging.
Ferrari qualifying performance was impressive
Former Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley highlighted it during the latest High Performance Racing podcast, pinpointing the fact that Lewis was actually ahead of Russell until the Mercedes man turned things around very late in the lap.
Smedley said of Ferrari’s impressive qualifying performance: “He was a tenth up before the last corner on my dark web data, the engineer’s dark web.”
So this was not just superior race strategy and a well-timed virtual safety car which helped Ferrari dethrone a Mercedes team which had won the first six races of the 2026 season. It was much more than that, a raft of upgrades which clearly went a long way to levelling the playing field.
Smedley added: “I don’t think anything seismic has changed because it never does that in Formula 1 – things ebb and flow. Ferrari had a very very good car in Monte Carlo, you saw them with a decent car. They brought a package to Barcelona and it was a very good car.”
2026 Pecking order will be challenged again
The former Ferrari man expects the pecking order to be challenged on an ongoing basis for the rest of the season as those controversial new regulations continue to bed in.
“Now, will they have the best car at the end of the season? Maybe, maybe not – it would be ridiculous to try and call that here now. Because everybody is in this very early stages of development.
“But things are changing – we talked about this from our very first show. With a rule set as immature as this, this will continue to change throughout the season. It’s exciting and it’s good for the fans.”
