Hamilton steps aside from Mugello tyre test as Zhou steps in for Ferrari
Ferrari will field Zhou Guanyu alongside Charles Leclerc in Friday’s Pirelli tyre test at Mugello after Lewis Hamilton withdrew late on, with the decision coming in the wake of a health scare involving the Briton’s beloved bulldog, Roscoe.
Pirelli confirmed the revised line-up on Thursday evening, naming Zhou in the SF-25 mule car for the final day of running. No official reason was given for Hamilton’s absence, but it followed an emotional post from the seven-time World Champion, who shared an image of 12-year-old Roscoe in an incubator and wrote: “It’s been a scary few hours. Everyone please keep Roscoe in your thoughts and prayers.”
Ferrari hasn’t offered further comment, but the change is understood to be for personal reasons. It’s a compassionate call in a week that was already light on low-hanging positives for Hamilton, who’s still hunting his first Ferrari podium in a season that’s proven more spiky than smooth.
Ferrari and customer team Haas are at Mugello to support Pirelli’s development push for the 2026 tyres, using a mix of adapted machinery and “mule” cars tuned to mimic next year’s active-aero era. Hamilton had been slated to split Friday’s mileage with Leclerc for a final evaluation of Pirelli’s hardest compounds, but Zhou — the team’s reserve and a former full-time Sauber driver — will now handle the duty.
The 26-year-old Chinese driver has kept himself sharp with Ferrari’s programme this week, sharing a Testing of Previous Car day on Thursday in the 2023 chassis with Arthur Leclerc. The focus there is driver familiarisation and correlation work, freeing up the active test mule and helping Ferrari tick through a dense checklist at one of the most punishing circuits on the calendar.
Over at Haas, race drivers Esteban Ocon and Oliver Bearman put in the early graft for Pirelli on Thursday in an adapted 2024 car. Ocon logged around 40 laps in the dry to probe the upper end of the compound range before rain rolled in, at which point Bearman took over for 30 laps on intermediates. The American outfit will pivot to its own TPC plan on Friday, reuniting with Romain Grosjean for his first F1 run since his 2020 Bahrain accident, while IndyCar veteran James Hinchcliffe is set for a first taste of grand prix machinery as part of an F1 TV filming day.
For Pirelli, Mugello is a proper workout: long-load corners, unforgiving kerbs, and enough sustained lateral energy to tell the truth about any compound’s integrity. It’s also a useful stage for the mule cars that teams have been evolving to better simulate 2026. Ferrari has even tested a moveable, DRS-style element on the front wing at a recent Budapest run, an experiment aimed at replicating the effects of next year’s active aerodynamics and giving Pirelli reliable data on carcass stress and wear patterns.
This is the grindy, unglamorous end of development that rarely grabs headlines — unless a star name goes missing. Hamilton doing so for family reasons is hardly a drama in context, and there’s no doubt Ferrari will still get what it needs from the day. Zhou’s familiarity with the programme and Leclerc’s relentless testing appetite should keep the laps productive.
Beyond the Mugello gates, Hamilton’s situation will draw a sympathetic nod across the paddock. Drivers aren’t machines; life intrudes. And while Ferrari could use every ounce of momentum it can find right now, there’s little to be lost by giving its new signing the space he’s asked for. The tyre data still comes in, the programme still runs, and the season rolls on.
Zhou, meanwhile, gets another meaningful outing in Ferrari red — a valuable vote of trust for a driver who’s kept his head down and earned it. And if the weather holds, Pirelli will get the clean read on those hardest compounds it was chasing.
Mugello rarely disappoints. Friday should be busy, brisk, and quietly important. For Hamilton, it’s a day to focus elsewhere. For Ferrari, it’s business as usual — just with a different name on the timing screen.
