Five races into 2026 and the paddock’s pecking order has been brutally simple: Mercedes wins, everyone else auditions for “best of the rest”. But the interesting conversation now isn’t whether that streak will end — it’s where the first crack in the pattern is most likely to appear.
Jolyon Palmer is convinced it’s coming, and he’s putting his chips on Ferrari. Not as a vague, end-of-season hunch either, but with a specific read on the calendar: once Formula 1 gets away from the power-sensitive venues that have amplified Ferrari’s weakness, the Scuderia’s underlying package starts to look like a race-winning tool.
“Ferrari will definitely win a race this year,” Palmer said, tipping Monaco as the moment the narrative shifts. It’s a bold call only if you’ve been watching the results column and not the car. Ferrari hasn’t been a mess in 2026; it’s been narrowly incomplete. Over a single lap and through the slower, twistier sections, the car has enough in it to nag Mercedes. Over a full grand prix at tracks where horsepower and deployment matter more, that missing piece becomes a ceiling.
Palmer’s reasoning is rooted in the old Monaco truth: reduce the importance of power and you expose who’s actually got the best chassis and the cleanest traction. And in his view, Ferrari ticks the right boxes. He described it as “a brilliant chassis” and pointed to another advantage that doesn’t always get the spotlight until it decides your Sunday — launch performance. Ferrari, he says, has been “great off the line” and still carries an edge there. At Monaco, where track position is currency and clean air is everything, that matters.
Then there’s the human factor. If you’re going to pick one Ferrari driver to turn a strong car into a win on the streets, Palmer doesn’t hesitate: Charles Leclerc.
“I think I would put that on Charles because I think he’s just such a Monaco specialist and it’s his home race,” Palmer said.
That’s not just romance. Monaco has a habit of rewarding the driver who can flirt with the walls without ever properly meeting them, and Leclerc’s confidence around there tends to look different to his confidence almost anywhere else. In a season where Mercedes has controlled the big picture, Monaco is the kind of weekend that can be stolen with one perfect qualifying lap and a ruthless first 30 metres.
Palmer isn’t pretending Ferrari is flawless, though — and this is the key point. He’s clear that the “power unit on the Ferrari is their weakness”, and that it’s not something a driver can mask with bravado or brake points. That limitation is exactly why he frames Monaco as a “golden chance”: a venue where Ferrari’s strengths are magnified and its weakness is partially neutralised.
And if Monaco doesn’t land? Palmer’s list doesn’t stop at the harbour.
Zandvoort and Budapest get a mention as other circuits where Ferrari can be “really competitive”, and the logic is consistent: more emphasis on rhythm, traction and a compliant chassis; less reliance on brute power. He also points to Canada as a possible opportunity, while noting Lewis Hamilton’s formidable history in Hungary and Leclerc’s form there — including taking pole last year.
Hamilton is the more intriguing subplot in all this. Ferrari’s early-season position has been strong enough to keep the project feeling credible — second-best on the grid, with the team sitting 41 points clear of McLaren in third — but that doesn’t automatically translate into wins in a season where Mercedes has started with such force. For Hamilton, staying “close and fight[ing]” as Palmer put it, isn’t just about Sundays. It’s about keeping himself in the title conversation long enough for the calendar to bring Ferrari to tracks that suit it, and for the team to land the kind of weekend Monaco can offer.
There’s also the weight of the drought. Ferrari is now approaching 600 days since its last win, dating back to Carlos Sainz’s victory at the 2024 Mexico City Grand Prix — a stat that hangs around Maranello like a persistent fog. That doesn’t change the pace of the 2026 car, but it does change the feel of every near-miss, every “good points” Sunday, every race where being second-best is treated like a consolation prize.
What makes Palmer’s prediction compelling is that it doesn’t rely on Mercedes suddenly tripping over itself. It’s a map of where Ferrari can land a clean hit on merit: twistier circuits, qualifying-dependent weekends, races where launch and traction can manufacture track position that raw power can’t easily take back.
If Ferrari is going to end this wait, Monaco is the obvious stage. Not because it’s easy — it never is — but because it’s one of the few places left where a team with the right chassis and the right driver can still tilt the whole weekend in its favour. In 2026, that might be all Ferrari needs.
