Lewis Hamilton left Barcelona wearing the kind of grin Ferrari has been chasing for years — and, on paper at least, he had the stopwatch to match it.
A late flyer on the final day of the five-day shakedown put the SF-26 on top of the unofficial times, Hamilton’s 1:16.348 nudging George Russell’s Mercedes benchmark by a tenth with moments to spare. In a test where everyone is playing games with fuel, modes and tyre information kept firmly out of sight, the number itself isn’t the story. The more interesting bit is what that lap did to the paddock narrative: it forced people to talk about Ferrari as a front-runner again, even as rival engineers quietly muttered that the car doesn’t look especially friendly.
Sky F1’s Craig Slater said he’d been told by “several individuals” from different teams that Ferrari’s new machine is “quite a handful” around Barcelona. That’s a striking phrase so early, and it lands differently in 2026 with brand-new regulations bedding in and teams still discovering what “fast” is supposed to look like. Slater’s read — based on those conversations — is that Ferrari begin the year behind Mercedes, with McLaren and Red Bull also ahead in the initial pecking order.
It’s also worth noting Ferrari didn’t just pop up at the end of the week, grab a headline time and disappear. The unofficial lap count had them logging 442 laps across the shakedown, second only to Mercedes. Whatever the SF-26 is right now, it’s at least getting around consistently enough to let Ferrari work through its programme — a more meaningful barometer than any single lap, and a welcome change from the stop-start winters that tend to breed early-season panic.
Behind the scenes, the consensus Slater and Ted Kravitz pieced together is that the “top four” remains the same group as last season: Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull. Former performance engineer and strategy chief turned Sky analyst Bernie Collins echoed that view, arguing that the familiar quartet still looks like the sport’s reference point as 2026 begins — even if their internal order is up for debate.
Where the debate gets spicy is Ferrari’s drivability versus its potential. A “handful” can mean several things at this stage: a car that’s nervous on entry, a rear that won’t settle on traction, or simply a platform that’s quick but narrow in its operating window — the kind that makes a driver look heroic one lap and busy the next. And if you’re trying to read anything into a closed-door test, the way the driver talks when he climbs out matters as much as the data traces nobody else can see.
That’s why Collins zeroed in on Hamilton’s tone rather than the lap time. After a difficult first year at Ferrari in 2025, the seven-time champion came out of Barcelona calling it a “hugely enjoyable week” and talking up a “winning mentality” he believes is now running high inside the team. You don’t need to be told what it means when Hamilton’s public messaging swings from guarded to upbeat. Drivers don’t fake that shift for long, and Ferrari doesn’t often get that kind of unprompted optimism from a champion unless something underneath feels credible.
Collins was careful not to get carried away — Ferrari still has “work to do”, in her words — but she also framed Hamilton’s positivity as a meaningful sign. Not a title prediction, not a guarantee, just a hint that Ferrari might finally be giving him a car he can build with rather than wrestle against.
As for the bigger picture from Barcelona, Slater and Kravitz both leaned Mercedes as the early standard-setter, with Slater’s information suggesting McLaren and Red Bull are close behind. The implication is that Ferrari’s ultimate pace might be real, but its baseline — the bit you rely on over a race stint, through traffic, in changing conditions — may not be as settled as its rivals.
Outside the big four, Slater judged Alpine as “clearly” best of the rest on what he’d seen. Aston Martin and Williams remain harder to place: Aston Martin only rolled out its AMR26 late on Day 4, while Williams didn’t attend the Barcelona shakedown at all and is expected to appear when the first official pre-season test begins in Bahrain.
The key takeaway, though, is less about who “won” a week of unofficial timing and more about what nobody is saying with a straight face anymore: that these cars might be slow, awkward, or a step back as the new era starts. Collins pointed out that the lap times suggest performance is “much, much better” than some feared, with more still to come from the power units. In other words, the 2026 reset doesn’t look like it’s arrived with the handbrake on — a relief for everyone, even if it makes the competitive picture harder to read.
Proper answers should start to arrive in Bahrain. The first test runs from 11–13 February, with a second and final outing scheduled for 18–20 February. Barcelona gave Ferrari a headline, Mercedes the early aura, and the rest of the grid plenty to chew on. But the most Ferrari thing imaginable would be this: the quickest lap of the winter paired with the paddock whisper that it’s still not quite tame.
Hamilton, at least, sounds like he’s ready for that fight.
