Lewis Hamilton's big Ferrari F1 breakthrough explained

Added: 2026-05-29

[00:00:00]Lewis Hamilton has made a big breakthrough and is back to his best with Ferrari. That's a tempting conclusion to draw after arguably Hamilton's strongest weekend in Ferrari colors at the Canadian Grand Prix. But is this another false dawn? Or was there firm evidence that Hamilton is really starting to click with Ferrari? Hamilton certainly looked like his old self in the car, hustling it hard between the walls, rescuing the odd moment in practice as he keyed himself into the track, but totally at ease with exploiting the SF26's low speed handling. The Ferrari has by far the best mid-c corner adjustability of any car on the grid, and Hamilton's bold way of attacking the corners works beautifully. He breaks late but still finds the perfect sweet spot of rotation in how he comes off the left pedal into the turn without scrubbing away speed on the exit that he gained on entry. He's able to drive the car in his natural way. And he's happy that his engineering team has developed a better understanding of what it is he needs. In fact, Hamilton went as far to call Sunday in Montreal the happiest day of my Ferrari day so far. He said he finally has the engineering team he's been working towards after changes, which included a new race engineer ahead of the season. And importantly, after such a bruising 2025, Hamilton said, "I feel very light right now, mentally in a good place. In a ground effect car, Hamilton's late braking style was never going to get him to his previous level."

[00:01:23]In that era, Hamilton's late braking meant the arrow balance shifted too much towards the front end of the car into low and medium speed corners. Then the exact opposite would happen as the arrow shifted quickly rearwards again in the next phase as the brakes were released.

[00:01:37]It was too disrupting to an aero platform that needed to stay level to give its best. Late braking and big steering inputs really didn't allow him to squeeze the last couple of tents out of the car on a consistent basis. But we're no longer in the ground effect era. These cars have rideites. You can see have more compliant suspension and can more easily accept a workable downforce and balance combination.

[00:01:59]Hamilton's muscle memory, which has probably been working against him since 2022, is suddenly perfectly appropriate to the car. Not only is the SF26 not a ground effect car, but it's been developed with a greater understanding from the engineering team of what traits Hamilton needs in the car. It's why Hamilton spoken so much of having his DNA in the car, as last year, he inherited a car he had no hand in developing. But hold on a minute here.

[00:02:25]Before we declare the Hamilton of oldest back, there are some important caveats to dig into.

[00:02:33]Montreal is Hamilton's third most successful trackpie wins and is second place last weekend moves the circuit Jillville Nerve into joint fourth on his podium list. Shanghai, the scene of Hamilton's other standout 2026 weekend is also one of his favorite tracks too with six wins. So, we've just had two of his standout tracks in the last four races, and he outperformed teammate Charlotte Clair at them both, just as he did in his lackluster 2025 campaign.

[00:03:01]Speaking of, he's just come off his self-described worst weekend of my career. So, it's hardly a great barometer with which to judge Hamilton's absolute level in 2026. Cla's worst weekend of his career was one in which he still qualified only a tenth slower than Hamilton in both sessions beat him in the sprint and finished fourth in the Grand Prix. Butlair put that Sunday result more down to luck as he still finished over 33 seconds behind Hamilton not helped by a spin and having little to fight for while Hamilton was dueling Maxappen on merit for the first time in a long while. Clare said Melbourne and Montreal are the two tracks where he struggled most with meshing his driving style with the circuit. He's previously spoken of never really enjoying them, nor round two in Shanghai, where Hamilton also thrived and was on the podium. So, by pure chance, there's a high concentration of circuits doesn't gel with very early on the calendar. It was great to see Hamilton with all his old confidence between Montreal's walls, but let's get a broader sample set to see how representative it was. CLA described his problems in Montreal as not being able to get the tires anywhere near the performance window. If you cannot reach that threshold with the front tires, and it really is like a switch, you will be nowhere near the pace. Montreal's grippless surface, slow short corners, and low track temperatures with a perfect mix to expose any difficulty with that. Drives with an extreme tolerance for over steer. typically breaks slightly earlier than Hamilton, dynamically dances with the weight distribution of all four corners to get rotation, and relies less on big steering angle. He will often use some trailing throttle on corner entry to stabilize the rear, which can increase under steer. But by locking the diff more, the car has greater traction, though there's less of that now it costs battery energy. It's a busier style than Hamilton's and perhaps doesn't load up the front tires as much. And on a track where you're having to push the front tires to get them to their window rather than holding back to prevent them overheating, that can create difficulties. It will not be like that in Monaco. If there was only one F1 race per year and it was Monaco, would be without a shadow of doubt F1's greatest driver. He really is very special there.

[00:05:13]The Ferrari with its dynamite slow corner performance, adjustable balance, and great small turbo response is perfectly configured for that track, too. a place where its outright power deficit is less important than anywhere else. So an old Ferrari front row would not be a surprise. If Hamilton can get anywhere nearlair around there, we can say he's definitely back. But even if he can't, he might be given just how goodlair is around Monaco.

[00:05:42]Another important factor is the biggest change Hamilton made to his pre-weekend preparations for Montreal. He ditched doing the simulator work that he's long despised. Hamilton said he barely used the simulator during his seven world championship victories, barring his first with McLaren in 2008, and has so far found it a frustrating experience at Ferrari. He frequently used the Ferrari simulator last year, but it often meant Hamilton turned up to weekends with a setup direction he'd honed in the virtual world, which would turn out to be useless in the real world. That led to some frustrating Fridays and meant Hamilton was always playing catch-up through a weekend rather than hitting the ground running. That doesn't mean Hamilton didn't do any preparation for Montreal. He instead took a deep dive into working on the Ferrari's through corner balance, mechanical balance, corner approaches, brake balance, optimizing the brakes, and better integration with his engineers. So, given the successful weekend, you'd imagine Hamilton would be quite happy if he never had to set foot in Ferrari Simulator again. But it's not quite that simple. He discarded it in preparing for Shanghai and Montreal, and they've been his two best performances to date. but they almost certainly would have been anyway. He always excels at those venues. Whether he will gain more than he loses by not using the sim for subsequent tracks is an open question.

[00:06:58]Has to the 2026 generation of power units styied llair with the battery demands reducing the reward for his magical throttle usage? Quite possibly.

[00:07:07]Have the revised error regulations helped Hamilton out of the dead end he was in with the ground effects cars? It looks like it. Yes. So, their performances have converged compared to last year. But that was Hamilton's first year with a very different car to the Mercedes in an environment where the Clair was long entrenched. How are they really comparing this year? The statistics say they've been more or less even with the Clair only having a slender advantage in qualifying of 3700ths of a second. There is that element of the sample set being potentially skewed by the high concentration of circuits that the Clare struggles on while Hamilton thrives.

[00:07:43]Take out Shanghai and Montreal as those specific tracks and we are left with Melbourne, Suzuka, and Miami. At those three venues, their performances were close, much closer than in 2025. But it was definitely Llair who was Ferrari's cutting edge. You'd expect him to be so at Monaco once more given his record there, but only the next few races will give us a more definitive picture of the extent of Hamilton's return to form and whether's prowess has really been stymied.