Nobody handed Lewis Hamilton a reset button. He had to earn it. After publicly enduring one of the toughest seasons for any F1 veteran, where he finished 2025 without a single podium for the first time in 19 seasons, the seven-time world champion arrives in Melbourne for this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix looking, by all accounts, like a man who went somewhere quiet, sat with failure, and came out the other side with a sharp edge.
The question is not whether Hamilton is still in F1. This has been decided from his career record. The question is whether everything around him – the new car, the new rules, his own adjusted mindset – is going the way it should.
read mine? it happens. And Ferrari, for the first time since that disastrous SF-25 campaign, looks like it might actually be worthy of that.
Lewis Hamilton helped build Ferrari’s new car and it matters
The SF-26 really surprised people during Bahrain testing, and not in the way Paddock expected to surprise. Before the wheels even turned in pre-season, the talk was about whether these new generation cars would be embarrassingly slow. It was a concern that was rooted in what happened in 2014, the last time F1 made a massive change to its power units, when only Mercedes got it right and the field spent several months floundering.
This time it did not happen. Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur put it clearly to Motorsport Italy.
“People were saying we would be close to F2, yet we are only two or three seconds away from the 2025 timing, and the temperatures were very low during the Bahrain tests last year,” he said last month. “The most important thing is strong competition: when there is a tough battle between two or more teams, I don’t think it matters much to be one or two seconds slower than last season. What matters is to be one-tenth of a second faster than all rivals.”
This is the correct philosophy. And Ferrari backed it up with genuine innovation. The talk of the second testing week in Bahrain was about the Scuderia’s rear wing design that flips 180 degrees to reduce drag, and a new aerodynamic solution called FTM that exploits exhaust gases to aid energy recovery. This is not a team based on history. Maranello is aggressively pushing the technical limits in the new regulatory era, and this means a lot for the development race that will define who wins the race in the second half of 2026.
Now peel back the layers of what has changed for Hamilton personally. Outgoing ground-effect cars – where engineers hid performance in complex aerodynamic channels running beneath the car – never found favor with him. He himself said it repeatedly, not as an excuse but as an honest technical assessment from a driver with 20 years of experience of what is required for a good racing car. 2026 cars are smaller, lighter and more mechanically responsive. They require active management of power deployment and energy recovery that rewards the driver who thinks deeply about each input on the lap. This description fits Hamilton perfectly.
‘Happy Lewis is a fast Lewis’
Now that the car seems to be moving in the right direction and Hamilton has reset his mind and is feeling positive, the game has changed. It appears that the harmony and happiness he has found means everything and this is a big problem for the rest of the region.
Martin Brundle on Sky Sports F1 said, “Not only in Ferrari, but Lewis has always been a pleasure to be fast.” “And I have to say that Ferrari have been quite innovative over the winter, so I’m confident that Lewis will have a better year.”
Happy and fast. This is the formula. And something has clearly changed. When Ferrari unveiled the SF-26, Hamilton described the moment to journalists, translated via Corriere Della Sera, as “feeling as happy as a child.” He is not a professional speedster. He is the person who looks at the car and recognizes the potential.
F1 broadcaster Will Buxton made it clear during a recent radio appearance that he believes Hamilton can return to form in 2021.
Buxton said, “The Ferrari looks really good, like really good, and Lewis was just waiting for this regulation change to get him back to where he was in 2021, with a car he loved.”
But it’s the self-examination that’s honestly more impactful than the racing. Reflecting on 2025 in his own words, he shows us why he is one of the greatest players ever to grace the grid.
“You have to look inward and observe the people around you, from your coworkers to your family, stay motivated and ask yourself uncomfortable questions. ‘Am I doing enough? Can I be better? Can I be kinder? How should I change my ways?’ Hamilton said.
And then on Saturday morning, before this new season started, they posted their announcement. Already 20 seasons in, he simply said: “I’m still here, 20 years later, still standing, still hungry, still focused on the dream. No turning back.”
His teammate, Charles Leclerc, won’t make it easy. Leclerc is truly elite, and his speed in qualifying, in particular, is a different animal than any former teammate Hamilton has dealt with. But that’s the point. This Ferrari lineup is capable of putting two cars out front on the right weekend and the SF-26 looks like the machinery to do it.
Hamilton won the race this year. Leclerc also wins the race. Ferrari, for the first time in what seems like forever, is going to make people nervous. The return is real. It will start on Sunday in Albert Park.
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