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The seven-time World Champion suffered a serious loss of form with the introduction of ground effect cars in 2022. Those cars generated downforce mostly from the shape of their underfloor (rather than their wings and diffuser) and had very limited suspension setups. It’s fair to say that Hamilton never gelled with them. The previous year, he had won eight races, taking his career tally to 103. He didn’t win a race at all in 2022 or 2023, although he did take victory at the British Grand Prix in 2024, then inherited the win in Belgium two races later when George Russell was disqualified after the fact.

In 2025, Hamilton left Mercedes, where he’d won six of his seven championships, for the challenge of racing for Ferrari. But his results in the ground effect Ferrari were even worse than they were in the ground effect Mercedes, and by the end of the season, plenty of critics were asking if it was time for the driver to retire.

The 2026 car is much more to Hamilton’s liking. It’s smaller, lighter, and more nimble, and the ground effect-generating floors are gone. It’s much more compatible with his driving style, which involves late, heavy braking before rotating the car at the corner apex. Even more so since he was able to persuade team management that it was worth upsetting long-term partner Brembo—a relationship that stretches over 50 years—to switch to his preferred brake pad supplier, Carbon Industrie.

Buoyed by second places in both Canada and Monaco, Hamilton appeared a little lost during the second of Friday’s two practice sessions, having given up his car during the first for Ferrari junior Dino Beganovich. But on Saturday, Hamilton was much more at home in the car and missed out on pole to his former Mercedes teammate Russell by less than a tenth of a second.

Despite Hamilton’s qualifying performance, conventional wisdom still had the silver Mercedes cars as favorites. Kimi Antonelli qualified third, fresh off yet another win at Monaco, but Leclerc’s Ferrari was in 10th after a crash, unable to support his teammate—or challenge for the lead himself—at the start of the race. Mercedes looks to have negated Ferrari’s starting advantage; in Canada, Monaco, and now Spain, its cars were plenty quick when the lights went out.