Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav Formula 1 raced in Spain this past weekend. The Barcelona-Catalunya circuit is one of F1’s purpose-built race tracks, with a number of fast corners and a track surface that’s more abrasive than usual. That means downforce is the name of the game. Catalunya has always required good aerodynamics, but it’s doubly important now. The more speed you can carry through a corner, the less energy you have to add on the following straight, and energy management is now as important in F1 as it is at Le Mans or in Formula E or even IndyCar. And the more downforce you have, the less the car slides, and the less the car slides, the less the tires get eaten up.
It’s the tire wear that suggested the strategies. So far, all the races this season have been one-stop affairs as drivers make their required change from one tire compound to another. But 66 laps of Catalunya would require at least three sets of Pirelli tires to get to the end. Maybe even four. As the tires wear, they become slower, to the tune of 0.2–0.3 seconds per lap. And one way to exploit that is with an “undercut”—pit early, change onto fresh rubber, and make use of the tire offset against your rivals to put in fast laps while they’re losing time. Do it right, and when they make their next pit stop, you should be in front.
Splitting the race into four stints means one more pit stop, and it costs about 22 seconds to drive through the pit lane, stop in the box, and then exit the pit lane again, assuming a tire change in less than three seconds. But since each set of tires is needed for fewer laps, they can be worked hard enough to offset that 22-second pit stop and more.
Bold strategies like that don’t always work; the two-stop plan that most teams opted for was the safe, sensible option. But Ferrari didn’t play it safe. It arrived in Spain with a massively upgraded car—new front wing, new floor, new sidepods, and so on. It probably already had the best chassis on the grid, and unlike a couple of years ago, the upgrade it brought to Spain worked well, particularly when driven by a newly resurgent Lewis Hamilton.
The seven-time World Champion suffered a serious loss of form with the introduction of ground effect cars in 2022. Those cars generated downforce mostly from the shape of their underfloor (rather than their wings and diffuser) and had very limited suspension setups. It’s fair to say that Hamilton never gelled with them. The previous year, he had won eight races, taking his career tally to 103. He didn’t win a race at all in 2022 or 2023, although he did take victory at the British Grand Prix in 2024, then inherited the win in Belgium two races later when George Russell was disqualified after the fact.
In 2025, Hamilton left Mercedes, where he’d won six of his seven championships, for the challenge of racing for Ferrari. But his results in the ground effect Ferrari were even worse than they were in the ground effect Mercedes, and by the end of the season, plenty of critics were asking if it was time for the driver to retire.
The 2026 car is much more to Hamilton’s liking. It’s smaller, lighter, and more nimble, and the ground effect-generating floors are gone. It’s much more compatible with his driving style, which involves late, heavy braking before rotating the car at the corner apex. Even more so since he was able to persuade team management that it was worth upsetting long-term partner Brembo—a relationship that stretches over 50 years—to switch to his preferred brake pad supplier, Carbon Industrie.
Buoyed by second places in both Canada and Monaco, Hamilton appeared a little lost during the second of Friday’s two practice sessions, having given up his car during the first for Ferrari junior Dino Beganovich. But on Saturday, Hamilton was much more at home in the car and missed out on pole to his former Mercedes teammate Russell by less than a tenth of a second.
Despite Hamilton’s qualifying performance, conventional wisdom still had the silver Mercedes cars as favorites. Kimi Antonelli qualified third, fresh off yet another win at Monaco, but Leclerc’s Ferrari was in 10th after a crash, unable to support his teammate—or challenge for the lead himself—at the start of the race. Mercedes looks to have negated Ferrari’s starting advantage; in Canada, Monaco, and now Spain, its cars were plenty quick when the lights went out.
Hamilton started on soft tires, unlike the medium-shod cars around him, and committed to the three-stop early, pitting on lap 11. Immediately, he started using the tire advantage to good effect, and, seeing his sector times, other teams called their drivers to the pits in response. Russell stopped on lap 12 and stayed ahead of Hamilton, who pitted again on lap 27. Russell kept the lead until he made his second stop on lap 36, battling with his own teammate Antonelli until then, with the pair losing time hand over fist to Hamilton. Antonelli stopped from the lead on lap 37, at which point Hamilton took first place and kept it until the end.
His third stop should have set up the prospect of watching him have to battle past Lando Norris’ McLaren and then both Mercedes, albeit with enough of a tire offset to most likely make his way back to the lead. But fate made things a little simpler. Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin stopped on track, and the virtual safety car period lasted just long enough for Hamilton to get in and out of the pits without losing a position. Rather than slow down and cruise to a win, Hamilton maintained his pace, finishing almost 20 seconds ahead of Russell.
And like that, Mercedes’ and Antonelli’s winning streak comes to an end. Manaure QUINTERO / POOL / AFP via Getty Images Kym Illman/Getty Images Kym Illman/Getty Images Michael Schumacher also won his first race for Ferrari in Spain, in 1996. Pascal Rondeau/Allsport/Getty Images Michael Schumacher also won his first race for Ferrari in Spain, in 1996. Pascal Rondeau/Allsport/Getty Images Kym Illman/Getty Images Michael Schumacher also won his first race for Ferrari in Spain, in 1996. Pascal Rondeau/Allsport/Getty Images Russell has been on the back foot of late after all of Antonelli’s wins, often due to reliability problems, but in Spain, it was his turn to benefit from what looks like an increasingly unreliable Mercedes power unit. Antonelli had actually just managed to pass Russell on track on lap 61 before grinding to a halt a lap later. Ferrari’s power unit is much more reliable, but this weekend, its hydraulics weren’t, costing Leclerc a race finish.
Antonelli’s DNF has shrunk his title lead to just 41 points ahead of Hamilton, with Russell in third. Given Ferrari’s speed at a track like Catalunya and better reliability, it might be time to start considering Hamilton as a proper contender.
