“My Mayor still Muslim, my bagel still Jewish, Hamilton’s on our side, Knicks in 5.”
My god, is this what relief feels like? Just one race this week to review? Oh my god, I love it here! And it’s a big one too, as F1 headed back to the Catalunya circuit for the newly renamed Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, the last of its kind before it becomes a rotational race exchanging with Spa and the Belgian Grand Prix going forward.
Anyway, Lewis Hamilton won to end Mercedes’ perfect record on the season. It’s like the sport went and friggin’ froze for a hot minute. Let’s talk about it.
Controlled Aggression
The weekend was playing out a lot like the formbook had been so far until Sunday. Russell claimed he was going back to basics and looking good in the process, taking a narrow pole position from Lewis Hamilton, who hit his last qualifying attempt out of nowhere right at the close of play – A nice soother for Ferrari given teammate Charles Leclerc was hanging out at the Turn 4 wall after losing the front of his car via a tank slapper. Yes, for those keeping score at home, it’s the third crash in three straight competitive sessions going back to the Monaco Grand Prix. More on that in a bit.
Russell was able to keep the lead early on and was able to quickly push out a three and a half second lead on his Medium tyres, while Lewis started on Softs. And on Lap 12, we had Lewis activate the start of what we didn’t know at the time, was a 3-stop strategy, or Plan C for Ferrari. To be fair, Plan C for Ferrari normally means getting punched in the cock.
Russell only just came out in the lead after the first round of stops, showing that the undercut was clearly worth a couple of seconds and Hamilton would stay in that range until dipping to confirm that three-stopper, to get off the Hard tyre and back on the medium. And there is where Hamilton would open an unrestrained can of whoop-ass.
Mercedes wouldn’t budge from their two-stop strategy and had to commit to it, with Russell’s lead disappearing under pressure from Kimi Antonelli, who came alive when he got used to saving tyres in the Catalan heat. Once the mediums were strapped to Hamilton’s car, he was 2.5 seconds a lap faster than the Mercedes. You lose 21 seconds in the pits for a green flag stop, and with two laps it was clear that the Silver Arrows was up shit creek without a paddle in terms of strategy. Their only hope was that they could come back on the crossover on fresh tyres when they came in for their second stop, but just as we were starting to see what crossover period would look like, with Russell 15 seconds back on the road…
…Fernando Alonso’s battery fails and he has to park the car. It brings out the Virtual Safety Car and with the delta on a stop under yellow being just 12 seconds, it was enough for Ferrari to make the obvious call, bring Lewis in under VSC, come out in front and take complete control of the race.
Russell didn’t have an answer after that one as Hamilton took off. He was in a different postcode when Russell was even passed by Antonelli with a handful of laps to go, only for Antonelli’s battery to die with 5 laps to go, ending his day and giving Russell a massive +18 swing on his Championship deficit. Goes to show you that it’s far too early to be making broad assumptions about the state of the Championship after round seven of 22.
But it was Lewis Hamilton’s day and what a day. Ferrari took the aggressive, riskier strategy option as a team that normally leans conservative and it actually worked out perfectly. A genuine feel good moment for the sport and you could tell it was special. The Spanish crowd erupted when he came out of the pits in the lead. There were warm embraces from Norris, Russell, Antonelli and Verstappen. Hamilton, who seems to channel a lot of his energy from his fans, was gushing to them and about them in his victory speech. It’s a remarkable contrast to this race a year ago, when he was calling himself useless, and that he was in the middle of his worst ever GP, a race where Nico Hulkenberg’s Sauber beat him on merit.
I genuinely wasn’t sure Lewis had this in him, and to not only win, but to do so by nearly 20 seconds was a remarkable victory. He had so much extra pace he may not have even needed the critical VSC when it landed.
So how do I feel about it all? Weird to be honest. Weird about Ferrari in general. A lot of people have been wanting to make grand sweeping conclusions about the state of play at the team and beyond as this weekend happened. Discussions of “momentum” (Not a real thing in sports), and grand takes about Charles Leclerc and a title campaign. The “aura” pics were back out in force after his grand unveiling at Maranello last year.
It’s amazing how things are magically golden at Ferrari now. Lewis Hamilton, the man who had to wait 26 starts for his first podium in red and 31 for his first win, had three great weekends in a row. And that Charles Leclerc is now washed. To which I say, guys… come on. We need a bigger sample size than this.
In my opinion, Charles Leclerc has been fundamentally miscast as a driver since he joined Ferrari eight years ago. Yes, he makes high-profile mistakes, maybe one or two a year. And those make people dogpile him because they’re easier to remember, but they turn a blind eye when the more in-depth analysis shows just how fast he is. The man has ONE losing season in his career and it was to another elite driver in Carlos Sainz, and it was by 5.5 points. (And Charles smoked him on the head-to-heads.)
Even in Monaco, Charles was ahead of Hamilton on merit, before what we think was a brake failure that put Leclerc in the wall. And Leclerc’s issues with the brakes were well documented, especially in an environment where we got confirmation that Hamilton had Fred Vasseur acquire some Carbone brakes under the table in Japan and didn’t go public with it.
And I’m not going to magically forget the last two seasons and change didn’t happen with Lewis. He was mentally checked out at best in his final year at Mercedes as George Russell was comprehensively better, or Leclerc doing the same last year. Yes, a degree of mitigation is needed as he was in a new environment but that was not the expectation going into it. People wanted a championship contender, and Lewis wasn’t that.
Simply put, we need to see more. Leclerc was leading in every major metric in the head-to-head before this three weekend rough spell came into play. Hamilton wasn’t this at any point before Canada. Ferrari’s upgrade package looked great, but if nothing else, the last two seasons that had car form fluctuate wildly across the season should be proof that jumping to conclusions can have dangerous ramifications.
Mercedes were six of six going into Spain, and Kimi Antonelli was virtually flawless in a five-race winning streak that almost always pencils you in for a title. Not to mention, this is a highly experimental new set of regulations with a balance of performance upgrade system thrown in and we’ve seen reliability play a huge role in this season so far.
But right now, it feels like none of that matters. Lewis Hamilton’s first win feels like the glass ceiling being broken. A monkey off the back. It’s hardly surprising, I’ve been saying for a decade now that he’s the transcendent figure that breaks the normal confines of F1’s social circle. Even the New York Times felt like his first Ferrari win was push notification worthy. But with copium being the oxygen that fuels social media, it’s hard not to get high when so many want one Lewis win to have us all pretending we’re on Mars.
The Lightning Round
Was that the first ever durag seen on an F1 podium? (I suspect thousands of middle-class white people just googled what that was.)
For what it’s worth – I didn’t hate Mercedes call to stick to the 2-stopper. There’s been far more egergious strategic screwups in recent F1 history. Lando Norris made it difficult to make a car cover off Hamilton’s 3-stopper attempt, and they had to go long as to not have a gargantuan final stint. That’s the power of raw pace from Ferrari – It backs you into a corner and makes you take bad options. Wolff’s indecision when Lewis was bearing down on them likely cost both drivers a shot at the win. Wolff admitted he was trying to play it down the middle and be fair with the team game. I get it, especially in today’s social media hellhole where the moment you split strats, the person who benefits gets accused of preferential treatment. It might have cost Mercedes the win here.
Podiumgate continued in force in Monaco. So on Thursday we found out that Alpine’s right to review was accepted and that Pierre Gasly’s podium got reinstated. Why? It turns out that when the FIA was measuring the pitlane for the timing loops (that determined average speed), they were 77 centimeters too short. That was spiking up the averages, which Alpine was able to provide telemetry that proved that Gasly’s car was going at 58kph both times. So, penalties were reversed.
Since then, we now know that Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren have all lodged a right to review of their own against the reinstatement. Toto Wolff openly admitted they don’t expect it to land – The stewards don’t have the power to overturn a penalty that’s already been served. And that’s probably for the best. It gets really messy if you start deducting race time away from people. Not to mention, everyone else involved who had penalties (Piastri, Hamilton, etc.) had teams make a conscious decision to come into the pits again, even if that meant being forced to serve the penalty. Personally, I think this is a much ado about nothing situation, but F1 can’t help but itself when it comes to inheriting Ferrari’s Plan C.
Fun fact: Lewis now has the biggest timespan between two wins in an F1 career – WIn #1 in Canada back in 2007 was 19 years and 4 days ago. Kimi Antonelli is 19 and 293 days old.
Nico Hulkenberg was battling Liam Lawson for the final point in 11th, when Lawson ran wide, and the gravel kicked up at the penultimate corner punctured the car’s engine cover, hitting the fire extinguisher and the ERS killswitch, ending his day. A genuine one-in-a-million retirement and something you may never see again.
It’ll go under the radar, but that was a really nice P3 drive from Lando Norris on the day. Quiet, but strong pace all around to keep Mercedes honest to the point where they were handcuffed strategically given his proximity. 35 seconds ahead of Oscar Piastri too. What have I said about the Aussie and low-grip tracks?
It’ll also go under the radar, but Pirelli bringing the C2-4 range (One up from last year), was a really nice move to make that race as strategically interesting as it was, where 2-3 stop strategies were viable. For me, that should be the sweet spot that Pirelli should constantly be aiming for. No one is here for generic one-stoppers.
301,000 fans across the weekend, and sold out GA on Saturday and Sunday. Did the Spanish roll out knowing this was likely Fernando Alonso’s last in Barcelona?
F2. Rafael Camara is the new #ThatBoyNice until spoken otherwise. MHMMMM.
The Verdict: 5.5/10 (Meh) – This wasn’t dreadful. The strategy mix-ups make this a little bit better than your standard Catalan snooze fest. It still wasn’t great, and passing still felt like a premium even with these battery yo-yo cars people think is the eighth circle of hell, but this was fine. Amazingly, probably the worst race we’ve had in 2026 and it was only average. See you in Austria.
