Last weekend, Lewis Hamilton took his first Grand Prix victory in what was a statement nineteen-second eighth win in Barcelona. There are so many things I could say about his first win in nearly two years as he became the first driver to win a Grand Prix for McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari.
The last eighteen months have been some of the most difficult of his career. Though I didn’t cover the weekend as I normally would, what I saw in practice and over the last few races suggests this is vintage Lewis Hamilton starting to return. There is even talk of an unlikely over the winter and early part of the season, given the strength of Mercedes a bid for an eighth world title.
One of the greats
The seven-time champions’ eighth win at the Circuit de Catalunya – Barcelona was an important statement against the critics after a 2025 season which was the worst of his career, he even doubted his future. In the context of ‘people trying to retire him,’ this I feel adds to him pushing back, saying he’s ‘not done yet.’ There has even been talk of a bid for a record-breaking eight title.
I think that is unlikely, but still there is hope, as Mercedes look like they have the quickest car; they aren’t infallible, as we saw in the race, customer teams and the Sakhir Test, Hamilton was chasing Kimi Antonelli into the closing stages as the Italian looked to have the measure of him. However, reliability has once again become a factor in the sport. That’s something the team has struggled with the strategy for years.
Looking back, the weekend appeared to be vintage Hamilton, coupled with the rarity of a masterstroke in Ferrari strategy and the timing of the final VSC, giving him a free pit stop. During the final stint, Hamilton looked to be pulling closer to Antonelli, but I think it was going to be difficult to do the move on track; given this was vintage Hamilton,
Hamilton told Sky Sports, “I think it’s just the beginning. Mercedes has got an amazing package, and they’re so strong. Both drivers are doing such an incredible job. It’s going to take absolutely everything from all of us in this team to overcome the deficit and to get to being ahead of them and doing this consistently. But nothing is impossible, so just one step at a time.”
But Ferrari is well aware that Mercedes remains the team to beat, Hamilton if he now has the car and the team behind him, could be like Max Verstappen last season who brought himself into McLaren’s fight. I wasn’t expecting to be talking about this given how strong Mercedes was.
It’s also true during the ground effect era between 2022-25, the seven-time champion didn’t really get to grips with the car as he a driver who likes to t hustle and move around to be fast, instead a smoother driving style was needed. Add into that a change of team and power unit last season, it could be more understandable why, particularly towards the end of 2025 he was so deflated.
In hindsight, over the opening eight rounds, things have looked closer with Charles Leclerc than they were last year I think that’s because Hamilton is qualifying better so in races he is able to fight.
In the Sakhir Test and the races so far this year you could see him able to drive the car naturally, thus allowing him to be closer to Leclerc, over the three races before last weekend he was matching Leclerc. Following the Barcelona-Catalunya Test in January, Hamilton said, “This thing actually talks to me, I can get a read on what it’s going to do, I like the way it moves around.”
That’s always been key, looking back through his career even if he didn’t have the car able to fight for championships, he was always to drag it to victory. His win was mor than a win, a triumphant return and answer to his critics about wheather he should retire, he isn’t done yet.
Victory was the 106th of his career, with the Briton becoming the oldest driver to win a Grand Prix since Jack Brabham at Kyalami in 1970, at 41 years and 158 days. The triumph came 30 years on from Michael Schumacher winning his first Grand Prix for Ferrari in Barcelona.
But yet it feels that from the test here six months ago, a win has been coming, but Hamilton needed to capitalise on that win as he has done in the past, he can do that as it appears the team may, but don’t hold your breath as its hard to forget the shambles of the last decade or so.
The seven-time world champion paid tribute to the entire team, from the trackside crew to the staff back in Maranello, highlighting the belief shown in him throughout a challenging first season and the huge amount of work that had gone into turning the project around. He also reserved special praise for the fans, whose support he described as a constant source of motivation during the difficult moments.
Hamilton is the greatest driver statistically of all time and his legacy is still being formed it is unusual that the toughest period of his career came in towards the end, after so much success, meaning the expectations are higher. If he can start doing something like Max Verstappen last season or Lando Norris in 2024, he could become a factor in this championship and/or next year’s.
How did he win?
After the race, Toto Wolff did not hide his regrets because, from his perspective, the potential to win a race that for long stretches had seemed in Mercedes’ hands was genuinely there. But the reality must be read from two different angles: on one side, the regrets of the Silver Arrow; on the other, the perfectly orchestrated trap set by the Maranello engineers.
Key to the victory was the decision to start on the soft compound, a decision that opened up several scenarios. On one hand, the softer tyre offered that extra punch at the launch, potentially enough to challenge for the lead. On the other, it already has the option of committing to an aggressive three‑stop strategy.
The race runs on Friday suggested that there was not much between a two or three stop race, though the risk was traffic which could have stopped Hamilton in the same way we saw it affect Mercedes, the difficulty in opening the gap. The lost during that phase as they needed to overtake, was seven to eight seconds, watching the race this being a circuit dominated traditionally by that year’s championship leading team you couldn’t see Mercedes pull away by a sizeable advantage.
During the stint, Russell had a three-second advantage, whereas in Barcelona you need seven to eight seconds to neutralise the undercut but not enough to guarantee real strategic flexibility. On the softs, Hamilton was inevitably the first to pit, triggering the sequence of stops and perhaps coming in a few laps earlier than the ideal window.
In affect this forced Mercedes’ hand with the two stop where the three stop from the information I had from Pirelli that they expected a multi-stop race. Barcelona straight line speed and hard stops make the circuit hard on tyres but the data still suggests Russell fell into Ferrari’s trap.
looking at Russell’s progression during the second stint, it is clear that he suffered from a certain level of tyre degradation to the point of allowing Kimi Antonelli to close in right behind him with a decidedly superior pace. Over the next eight laps Hamilton gained nineteen seconds recovering the lost time by the third stop, while Russell was losing time and struggling with understeer.
These were the major mistakes by Mercedes that, over the course of just eight laps, nearly wiped out Hamilton’s additional pitstop. By doing so, Ferrari secured that narrow window of a few laps where, if the race were to be neutralised, the seven‑time world champion could make his final pitstop and still come out ahead of his compatriot. And that is exactly what happened, with the added benefit of fresher tyres to take him all the way to the chequered flag.
Story behind the story
There have also been two key people join him at Ferrari, Loic Serra and his long-time physio Angela Cullen. Cullen took a two-year break from the sport and rejoined Hamilton last season. Also joining him at Ferrari was former F1 driver and advisor to Toto Wolff, Jerome D’Ambrosio.
Serra did not have full control of the 2025 car’s chassis but has led the development of the current SF-26. The Frenchman was at Mercedes during Hamilton’s championship-winning years and was performance director for the 2020 Silver Arrows, one of the most dominant cars in F1 history.
That technical prowess has translated into a 2026 Ferrari F1 car that is the benchmark in the corners and suits Hamilton’s driving style too.
It’s well documented that he didn’t get on with his race engineer last year Riccardo Adami, who was at the time ‘temporary’ replaced by Carlo Santi who engineered Kimi Raikkonen between 2016-2018, the later being his race engineer in 2018 when the Finn took his final win in Austin.
It was going to take time, we had a ‘false dawn’ in Shanghai last year but we also had that with Schumacher here in 1996. The Hamilton-Santi combination was originally an interim appointment but Sky Sports learned earlier this month there are no plans to make any changes to Hamilton’s engineer, who he calls “the Italian Bono”.
The brief winter break Hamilton took a long break between the Abu Dhabi and Catlan Tests which has always seemed to work well for him, even though this winter was the shortest ever. after a big crash during pre-season testing, and “unplugged from the matrix” after the season to reset himself.
He said: “I spent lots of time with family, lots of time with friends, real people that know me, that have never doubted me, have stuck to and by me my whole life. I just went on the mission from Christmas Day. The training that I put in was harder than I’ve ever experienced, to keep myself in good shape, because at the beginning of last year I got injured and carried that for months.
Hamilton needs to be happy off track, we saw in 2011-12 when there were problems with in an on-and-off relationship with Nicole Scherzinger, the lead singer of the American girl group Pussycat Dolls. Those were before last year, some of his worst in the sport, though he was still winning races and fighting for championships.
Singapore 2012 sticks out as a race where it was the end of an era where he and McLaren failed to deliver on what could have been a couple of championships, and by the next race in Suzuka, he made an equally shocking move to Mercedes. But it was a masterstroke; it could still be seen what happens next.
A Instagram post by Jake Humphrey about an interview in Sakhir 2009 h asked if he would put up with the hard-times in F1 he went “absolutely.” The backdrop to this being the ‘Liegate’ scandal in Melbourne and McLaren been off the pace but as the season went on, they were winning races during the second half of that year.
Antonelli
But it was a disappointing race for the driver who replaced him at Mercedes Kimi Antonelli, which benefited his teammate George Russell who took pole. This season the expected script of the Englishman dominating his teammate given he is the more experienced driver.
The championship leader was feeling “a bit empty” after a late mechanical issue denied the Mercedes driver from claiming a podium. It ended his run of five Grands Prix wins with his first retirement of the season. Antonelli had started behind both Russell and Hamilton, with Mercedes employing a two-stop strategy as opposed to Ferrari, who placed Hamilton on a three-stop due to the hot conditions.
One of the unanswered questions will be whether Mercedes would have managed without the mistakes and strategy calls to beat Ferrari’s three-stop strategy. The race was very marginal based on the information from Pirelli, between a two and three stop race.
Antonelli added, “I think if I could have made a move in stint two on George, [it] would have been a bit of a different race because, as I said, the pace was very good especially at the end of the stint.”
“I feel like it maybe would have been very close with Lewis with the VSC, so maybe we could have fought, but it is what it is. I think also my side, yesterday I didn’t do a good job so definitely now a week of rest and then ready for Austria to come back stronger and be back at the best form.”
But his retirement allowed his teammate to pick up valuable points, though his pole was a statement to Antonelli. In that race, though, maybe because of the pressure, like we saw with Oscar Piastri last year and Lando Norris in 2024, of fighting for your first championship without the experience, indeed Hamilton lost by just a point his first title challenge.
Nugget
The title of this came from a song, all about the Cost of success by Florence + The Machine, as it was a win after eighteen months of hard times and was almost a resurrection of the greatest drivers of all time (statistically). As a mixed-race driver he sometimes faces harsher criticism in a predominantly white sport.
But this season Hamilton has been brought back to life.
