Herbert backs Alonso over Hamilton for F1 2026 — but Hill says one sniff of victory changes everything
Lewis Hamilton’s first year in red never caught fire, and plenty of people noticed. Johnny Herbert was one of them. The three-time grand prix winner and former FIA steward says the 2025 version of Hamilton often looked lost, unable to prise performance out of the Ferrari the way Charles Leclerc could — and if you’re offering him a chip to place on 2026, he’s putting it on Fernando Alonso.
Speaking on the Stay on Track podcast, Herbert drew a line between the Hamilton who used to drive around a car’s vices and the one who struggled to bend Ferrari’s SF-25 to his will. He even reached for an old cautionary tale — Sebastian Vettel minus his beloved blown diffuser — to ask whether this era simply didn’t suit Hamilton.
“The Lewis I knew always found a way to drive around the problem,” Herbert said, before wondering aloud if the car’s traits just don’t match Hamilton anymore. He contrasted that with Alonso’s form at Aston Martin: imperfect package, yes, but a driver still able to squeeze the last drops out of it.
Damon Hill went a layer deeper. Age came up — both men are now in their 40s, with Alonso turning 45 in 2026 and Hamilton freshly 41 — but Hill’s take was about hunger as much as years. With Alonso, he said, there’s a sense of unfinished business; the Spaniard missed a few prime seasons in competitive machinery and still fights like he’s trying to reclaim them. With Hamilton, Hill wondered if the grind of a tough season dulled the edge.
“You get the sense Fernando still wants to recover something,” Hill said. “Whereas I wonder whether Lewis has had a belly full… He doesn’t want to be there.”
Hamilton wouldn’t argue it was a happy year. He ended 2025 winless and without a podium in his Ferrari debut, a long way shy of Leclerc in the points. The body language told the story at times — terse debriefs, a few raw post-race blasts, even a pointed suggestion at one stage that Ferrari should “change driver.” He later called it his worst season. If it was uncomfortable to watch, Herbert agreed. “Lewis, don’t do that,” he said of the flashpoints. “We get it… you’re trying everything, but you can’t do it.”
Herbert’s bottom line? If you handed both Hamilton and Alonso a title-capable car in 2026, right now he’d trust Alonso to land the punches. “I’d probably, sadly, go with Fernando,” he admitted, adding that he never saw Hamilton pull off the old party trick of transcending the car’s limits in 2025. “He looked lost… and Charles is getting around it.”
Harsh? Maybe. But it’s also why 2026 feels pivotal for Hamilton’s Ferrari project. The seven-time World Champion has already said he won’t miss the current ground-effect era, and he’s made noises about changing up his preparation for next year’s rules reset. New chassis and engine regulations should wipe part of the slate clean. Hill, for one, doesn’t think the racer in Hamilton has vanished — it just needs the right bait.
“I still believe that if you gave him a whiff of victory, that fire would reignite,” Hill said. It’s not exactly a wild prediction. For all the gloom of 2025, few drivers turn momentum into a weapon like Hamilton when the scent of a win is back in the helmet.
The other half of this equation is Alonso and Aston Martin. The team’s 2026 push comes with heavyweight backing as the Honda works partnership begins and Adrian Newey’s influence looms. Alonso’s made a habit of dragging more than expected from average Sundays; give him a top-tier package and no one doubts he’ll have a say.
Ferrari won’t be shy either. The target is clear from the first test: hit the ground running with a car Hamilton and Leclerc can both bully to the front, and turn the page on a season that promised spectacle but rarely delivered it in red.
Strip it down and the debate is simple. Herbert trusts Alonso’s ability to extract on the tough days. Hill trusts Hamilton’s killer instinct when the prize is real. The rest will be settled when the new cars fire up — and when two of F1’s greatest 40-somethings try to write one more chapter on their terms.
