Ferrari’s title challenge lost more ground in Madrid last weekend, and Lewis Hamilton is not selling the Scuderia’s newest engine as the reason it will not stay lost.
Kimi Antonelli moved to 292 points after winning the Spanish Grand Prix, according to Motorsport.com. George Russell sits 81 points back on 211, and Hamilton is third on 191, a further 20 adrift, with eight races left.
Hamilton’s weekend at the Madring ended on lap seven of 57 when the brake pedal on his Ferrari travelled long into Turn 5. He had started fourth and been running as high as third when the team called him in.
“We had the car to fight for a win today, and unfortunately it just didn’t work out,” Hamilton told Formula1.com.
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It was his first retirement of the 2026 season.
Ferrari brought their second and final ADUO power unit upgrade of 2026 to their home race at Monza the previous weekend, focused on the turbo and aimed at raw straight-line performance. It did not erase the deficit to Mercedes that has shaped Hamilton’s first season in red.
“We knew that the last upgrade wasn’t going to be the silver bullet and close that gap completely,” Hamilton told PlanetF1 before the Madrid race.
He put numbers on what still separates the two cars.
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“Mercedes really, if you look at the last race, they were six-tenths-a-lap quicker on the straights. In most of the other tracks, it’s three or four tenths we’re losing just on the straights.”
Rather than shape the rest of the season around what Mercedes are doing, Hamilton wants Ferrari looking at their own weekends.
“Our focus should just be on how we can do our best and execute our best on our weekends.”
The next test comes at the Baku City Circuit, where the Azerbaijan Grand Prix is scheduled for 26 September. Its long run from the final corner to Turn 1 is one of the calendar’s harshest tests of raw top speed, precisely the area where Ferrari have been losing time.
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