Lewis Hamilton’s first laps in Ferrari’s SF-26 at Fiorano were never going to tell anyone where the pecking order sits. A 15km demonstration run is about as revealing as a pitlane walk. But the significance of Friday’s shakedown wasn’t the lap time – it was the sight of a seven-time world champion having to recalibrate, in public, to a Formula 1 that’s rewritten its own rulebook.
Hamilton called 2026 “probably the biggest regulation change I have experienced in my career”, and for once that doesn’t sound like a veteran reaching for a quote. F1 has had big resets during his time — 2014’s power-unit revolution, 2022’s ground-effect return — but this is the rare one that changes the whole operating system at once. New chassis philosophy, new aero approach, and a power unit balance that drags the driver deeper into the technical fight.
Ferrari rolled its all-new car and engine out at its private Fiorano circuit with the usual tight choreography: Hamilton completed the first three laps, then handed the SF-26 over to Charles Leclerc for a further two to reach the permitted mileage. That’s it. Five laps and a few precious minutes of running to confirm nothing fundamental is broken before the serious mileage begins elsewhere.
What everyone latched onto, understandably, was the footage: Hamilton heading towards the first corner and triggering the movable front and rear wings. It was the first proper glimpse of 2026’s active aero in the wild, beyond renders and team talk. And it looked exactly like what it is — a new layer of complexity that will sit on top of everything drivers already do at 300km/h.
After four seasons in the ground-effect era, F1 has moved on. The 2026 cars are shorter and lighter than what came before, and they lean into active aerodynamics with movable front and rear wings. In isolation that’s a big enough shift for teams to lose months down the wrong path. Combined with the power unit tweaks, it’s an invitation for someone to find daylight — through innovation, interpretation, or simply getting their integration right while others chase their tails.
The new engines will run on fully sustainable fuel, with a 50-50 split between electrical and combustion power. In practical terms, it’s not just a “unit” any more; it’s a system that demands constant decision-making. Hamilton didn’t hide from that in his comments. He framed 2026 as a year where the driver is “central” to energy management and understanding the new systems — not an incidental passenger who just asks for a different diff setting and gets on with it.
That line will resonate inside the paddock. The sport’s spent years nudging the driver further away from the engineering conversation with ever-more complex cars and ever-more prescribed ways to drive them. 2026, at least in intent, pulls the driver back in. Not in the romantic “more steering, less science” way, but in the very modern sense that the best drivers will be the ones who can digest new tools, adapt their habits, and translate feel into direction while everyone’s building in a fog.
Hamilton also underlined something Ferrari will want to become a defining theme: alignment. “When a new era begins everything revolves around development, growth as a team, and moving forward in the same direction,” he said. It reads like standard winter optimism, but it’s also the subtext of any regulation reset. The first car you race is rarely the car you finish with. Early-season upgrades aren’t just performance; they’re admissions of what you got wrong. And in a year where active aero and energy deployment will be intertwined with how you drive a lap, the feedback loop between cockpit and factory matters more than ever.
From Ferrari’s perspective, there was value simply in showing a functioning SF-26, running cleanly, doing what it’s supposed to do. A shakedown is a systems test: sensors, hydraulics, electronics, procedures. You want boring. You want the car to go out, hit its mileage, come back, and allow the engineers to start the real work with confidence. Hamilton and Leclerc did exactly that.
Still, there was an edge to the moment. Hamilton is heading into his 20th season on the grid, and active aerodynamics in an F1 car is new territory for him. The idea that, in year 20, he’s got to build muscle memory around when and how to use movable wings — while also learning Ferrari’s internal language and rhythms — tells you just how sharp this reset is.
If you’re looking for a larger takeaway from those five laps, it’s not that Ferrari is fast or slow. It’s that everyone is starting again, and even the most experienced names are having to become students. Hamilton sounded energised by that. “Being involved from the very start in the development of such a different car has been a particularly fascinating challenge,” he said, pointing to close work with the engineers to “define a clear direction”.
Ferrari will sell it, as it always does, with passion — Hamilton referenced the tifosi and the weight that comes with the badge. But beneath the romance is the harder truth of 2026: this is the year the cleverest teams will establish their philosophies early, and the most adaptable drivers will make themselves indispensable.
Fiorano was just a trailer. The full film starts now.
