Lewis Hamilton didn’t need lap times or headlines to make his point after Barcelona. What mattered was the feel — and on his first proper run in Ferrari’s 2026-spec SF-26, the seven-time world champion sounded like a driver who’d found a car that talks back again.
After five days of unofficial running at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya from 26–30 January, Hamilton’s verdict on the new generation was blunt: it’s simply more enjoyable than what F1 has just left behind. That’s not a small comment given 2025 was the final season of the ground-effect era and, for Hamilton personally, a bruising first year in red where the championship conversation never really came to him.
The 2026 rules reset is sweeping — new chassis philosophy, new engine regulations, a very different aerodynamic picture — and Hamilton’s first impressions reflect that shift. Less downforce is the obvious headline, but the more revealing detail was how he described the car’s behaviour in slower, more human terms.
“In terms of just understanding the car and the balance, we have a lot less downforce than previous years,” Hamilton told Formula 1’s official website immediately after the test. “The car generation is actually a little bit more fun to drive. It’s oversteery and snappy and sliding, but it’s a little bit easier to catch.
“Yeah, I would definitely say more enjoyable.”
For a fanbase that’s watched Hamilton spend chunks of the ground-effect era wrestling with cars that often looked aloof at the limit — fast when they were perfect, baffling when they weren’t — that last line lands. There’s a driver’s subtext in it: the SF-26 is giving him something he can work with, not just something he has to endure.
Barcelona’s private test, inevitably, came with the usual fog. No official timing sheets were released, and the paddock likes it that way in January. Still, Hamilton was widely reported to have set the fastest time of the week — a 1:16.348 — which will do nothing to calm the early-season noise around Ferrari’s prospects, even if everyone involved knows how little January form guarantees.
What’s more interesting is where Ferrari goes next, because this is the point in winter where teams stop collecting “nice feelings” and start interrogating them. Hamilton sounded fully aware of that, describing a schedule that’s less glamorous than it looks on Instagram: the grind of promotional commitments, simulator work, engineering debriefs and physical training, all while the factory digests two drivers’ worth of feedback and turns it into test plans.
“Quite busy,” he said, mapping out the weeks ahead. “We still have a lot of promotional days that we have next week, so next week’s really mostly a promotional period.
“Obviously, the team will be digesting everything that’s happened this week and taking all our notes from Charles [Leclerc] and I, and trying to rework, remap and reconfigure things for the Bahrain test, setting up a plan.”
He also offered a glimpse of Ferrari’s internal rhythm at this time of year: long shoots, meetings squeezed into gaps, training sessions when you can steal them. Hamilton even couldn’t resist a little teammate needle, joking that Leclerc “doesn’t like to get up early” — the kind of throwaway line that also hints at a relationship that, at least publicly, is settling into something comfortable.
Ferrari’s next meaningful checkpoint comes in Bahrain, which hosts the two official pre-season tests on 11–13 and 18–20 February. That’s where the SF-26 stops being a promising first impression and starts becoming a set of answers — on long runs, on tyre behaviour, on whether this “snappy” balance is a controllable trait or a warning sign once the fuel goes in and the wind changes.
Then it’s straight into the sharp end: the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on 8 March. Not much runway. Not much time for romance.
Still, there was something quietly telling in how Hamilton framed the new cars. Drivers don’t hand out “more fun” lightly in modern F1, not when they’ve spent the last few years talking about correlation, porpoising, sensitivity and operating windows. “Oversteery and snappy and sliding” used to be a complaint. Here, Hamilton made it sound like an invitation — the sort of car that demands you take responsibility for it, but rewards you when you do.
If Ferrari can turn that feel into consistent performance, it could prove a neat twist after Hamilton’s difficult first season with the team. Because in 2026, the competitive order is going to be rewritten anyway — and Hamilton, at least, seems to like the pen he’s been handed.
