I said a few things last year about Lewis Hamilton, which his performance at the Formula 1 Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix put to bed.
I’ll start off by stating I do like a good pie. Particularly apple pie, doused in a globous amount of custard. It warms my stomach and can right almost any wrong. It is a dessert I crave yet save for special occasions, because I just love it so much. As a result, it comes out when I really need it, such as when my fiancée offers it to me as a bribe to attend a social event I may not want to go to or to do something I am not inclined to do otherwise.
But today, I am having a different kind. Today I must eat an entire humble pie, doused with a large helping of “I was wrong.” Last year, returning to Motorsport Monday after a year away, I stated that Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari were creating a “dangerous legacy”. Given his performances in 2025, this seemed a logical (if a tad melodramatic) assessment of his maiden year in red.
Lewis Hamilton is a transformed driver in 2026, just 41 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli, a quite literal teenager. The fact that he is the driver who replaced Hamilton at Mercedes has a strange kind of poetic justice. Ferrari has been quick to play down any talk of Hamilton challenging for the title, but if more victories follow in subsequent races, keeping a lid on this will be highly challenging.
There are several different aspects that make up my humble pie, and all have contributed to Hamilton’s resurgence.
An unrecognisable driver
We first must wind back to 2025. Hamilton looked utterly devastated during media sessions at the back end of the season, and with good reason. Suffering Q1 eliminations is bad enough, but in a Ferrari is nothing short of sacrilege. One of the last drivers in red to do this frequently was Luca Badoer in 2009, and we all know how that ended.
His confidence was shot, and his self-belief decimated, as he struggled to get on top of the SF-25, a car not designed for his driving style. It also must be said that Hamilton never truly adapted to the ground-effect era of car, something of a blemish on his exquisite career.
But, as we’ve discovered in the opening six races, the true Lewis Hamilton never left – to quote Daniel Ricciardo after his McLaren win in 2021. The difference between Ricciardo and Hamilton in this instance is that Hamilton has been on an upward trajectory since the start of the year, consistently putting in competitive performances that have put him second in the championship. Ricciardo’s 2021 victory, on the other hand, was, as we know, a brief flash of the brilliance he failed to rediscover during his time at McLaren.
Hamilton’s moulding of Ferrari has taken place away from prying eyes, but in Barcelona, it is now on full display. Teammate Charles Leclerc has failed to truly bring the team around him, and two crashes in two weekends demonstrate that he may be starting to feel the pressure of a Hamilton that is reborn, and most potently – fully recharged.
The most exciting thing is that Hamilton has not yet reached his new peak – whatever that may look like. This new version of the seven-time world champion is an amalgamation of years of experience, success and bouncing back from failure.
In short, this is a driver that could be about to reach new heights, should his and Ferrari’s Barcelona weekend be replicated elsewhere.
Bono 2.0 – and the hidden consequence behind it
A quick search on social media will showcase the awkward and, at times, cringeworthy radio exchanges between Hamilton and his former race engineer Riccardo Adami. These include the Italian seemingly ignoring Hamilton’s request for very specific information by providing something completely unrelated, radioing at the most inconvenient times, or, at worst, ignoring him entirely.
Perhaps the worst interaction of all came at Abu Dhabi, when Adami took an agonisingly long time to respond to Hamilton’s thank-you message on the cool-down lap. Anyone, after a year of dealing with the same faults year after year, would be hacked off and despondent. It came as no surprise, therefore, when Adami was very quietly moved to the role of Head of the Ferrari Driver Development Programme in the autumn.
A rather ignominious end to a career that has seen him manage the likes of Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz, it revealed work underway behind the scenes by Fred Vasseur. To replace Adami could be seen as a poisoned chalice. But someone had to step up to the plate, and it was veteran Carlo Santi who took the plunge.
The results have been immediate. The dynamic between the pair is fantastic to see, with Hamilton labelling Santi “my Italian Bono”. Quite the compliment, and when you listen back to the radio messages in Barcelona, it is not difficult to see why.
Santi has a far different style from Adami, where he encourages his driver and asks for his thoughts. Adami never did this; his style was more like a call centre agent who cannot deviate from the script.
But Santi is just one piece of the puzzle. Hamilton had a list of desired changes after his first few months at Maranello, but the list went quiet after first coming to light. Rather than in previous years, where the list was ignored, it has instead been acted upon.
Vasseur, unlike previous holders of the Ferrari Team Principal role, has actively listened to his driver. Given that Hamilton is statistically the most successful Grand Prix driver of all time, this should never have been debated.
Hamilton has worked behind the scenes on an engineering team that is built around him and his needs, which is paying dividends. Coupled with a car that he helped design and with a set of driving regulations more suited to his driving style, he is now able to move forward.
It’s a bit like a game of Tetris – while so many issues were flying around, his focus was scattered. Now Ferrari has given him a team that understands him, all the pieces are slotting into place in a way that would satisfy even the most extreme of OCD sufferers.
The strategic wheel of fortune finally binned off?
The one area in which Ferrari has consistently fallen short in recent years is strategy. To summarise, it has been woeful as a child forced to play the violin to a room full of adults, having never played it before. It is so bad you can’t look away, yet you want to with all of your might.
I have often likened the Ferrari approach to race strategy to the engineers simply spinning a wheel of fortune during a Grand Prix, and then reacting to whatever it lands on. Since 2022, it has been particularly bad. Last season, more errors were made, which left Hamilton questioning decisions, such as failing to pit under a Virtual Safety Car.
Barcelona demonstrated just how far the team has transformed. Execution, down to the tiniest of details, was flawless. Mercedes, the masters of strategy in recent years, were completely outmanoeuvred, forced to react to Ferrari’s proactivity.
The result? A Hamilton who fully believes in his team, a dramatic change from 2025, where he second-guessed every decision and whim while on the circuit. It has been brilliant to watch, as he races with confidence in his ability, and the team has transformed him into a driver who has already changed his legacy from a year ago.
Eating humble pie can be… well… humble. On this occasion, though, I savour every bite. I thoroughly believe Hamilton could challenge for more wins in 2026. Title talk is still a long way off, but correcting myself has never tasted more satisfying.