(Motorsport-Total.com) – Many experts had actually already written off Lewis Hamilton. After the Formula 1 record world champion finished his first Ferrari season in 2025 without a podium finish and only in sixth place in the World Championship, many no longer believed he would make a breakthrough with the Scuderia.
Read more Formula 1 technology: Ferrari engine upgrade expected to bring around 15 hp
But Hamilton showed his critics, first finishing second in the 2026 races in Canada and Monaco, and then securing his first victory for Ferrari last weekend in Barcelona. In the World Championship, he is currently in second position behind Kimi Antonelli.
“Lewis also deserves great credit for how he turned the situation from last year to this year so positively,” praises none other than Carlos Sainz, whom Hamilton replaced at Ferrari for the 2025 season. This decision was long viewed critically by many.
But now Hamilton’s results with the Scuderia are consistent, and Sainz explains: “I believe we all have a very high level of talent, but with different driving characteristics. Some cars suit us, others don’t.”
“The true strength of a driver is to be able to adapt and drive every Formula 1 car you get to its limits,” he emphasizes and reveals: “Something similar happened to me in 2022. At the beginning of the year, I had a Ferrari that I really didn’t like.”
Sainz: “Can determine your entire career”
“Then I managed to adapt, and in 2023 and 2024, I think I drove at a very high level,” says Sainz, who had problems at the beginning of the ground-effect era in 2022 and finished the season only in fifth place in the World Championship, while teammate Charles Leclerc fought for the title for a long time.
“That can determine your entire career,” Sainz emphasizes and explains: “Suddenly you come to a team with a car that doesn’t suit you, and you spend three years not being able to adapt – or the car never adapts to you – and you can look completely useless.”
Barcelona: Driver ratings from Marc Surer and the editorial team
“Then you switch to a team where the car perfectly suits your driving style, and suddenly you look like a god. This sport is much more complicated than people think,” says Sainz, who explains that Lewis Hamilton experienced something very similar in 2025.
Read more Formula 1 technology: Ferrari engine upgrade is expected to bring around 15 hp
In 2026, Hamilton “benefited from the rule change,” Sainz suspects, “because if he had had to drive the car from last year for three more years, we might not be seeing the Lewis we are experiencing this season.”
Indeed, Hamilton has never made a secret of not being a fan of the ground-effect cars between 2022 and 2025. He had recurring problems already at Mercedes, and after his move to Ferrari, the situation worsened even more.
Schumacher: That’s why the new cars suit Hamilton
Ralf Schumacher also shares the assessment that the new regulations suit Hamilton more again. “The cars are somewhat back to what Lewis Hamilton knows from his past,” he explains in Sky’s Backstage Boxengasse podcast.
“He drove in my time,” he says about Hamilton, “and we also had this kind of aerodynamics. That means the underbody is no longer quite as important,” he explains and reminds that Hamilton is “an extreme late braker.”
And this year’s new cars are “not quite as sensitive if you turn in later, brake, drive over the curb, because then the aerodynamics on the underbody are not so affected,” Schumacher explains.
“This old-school driving style works much better in such a car,” emphasizes the six-time Grand Prix winner, who in 2025 was also among the experts who had actually already written off Hamilton and advised him to retire.
“From my point of view, Lewis unfortunately no longer belongs in the Ferrari next year,” Schumacher said at the time, but qualified: “It can of course happen that this new concept suits Lewis Hamilton perfectly for some reason.”
Read more Formula 1 technology: Ferrari engine upgrade expected to bring around 15 hp
Exactly that now seems to have actually happened.