Lewis Hamilton’s Barcelona win ends four years of doubt and reignites title hopes

Am I catching them?” radioed Lewis Hamilton on the 34th lap of the Barcelona Grand Prix as he chased down the two Mercedes. It was an excited question but laced with doubt. The sort of tone to be expected after so long in the wilderness, days when it seemed like he’d never win again and was this apparent chance too good to be true?

That uncertainty has surrounded him almost since the day he was deprived of an eighth world championship by an invalid call by a race director. Four years and counting of ambiguity about his performances, unco-operative cars, jumping ship to Ferrari, finding a car there even more difficult for him than the Mercedes, a team-mate perhaps even faster who could do things with that difficult car he couldn’t even contemplate.

Meanwhile new Formula 1 stars, almost two generations on from him, making their names, taking the limelight, all measuring themselves against Max Verstappen, the accepted standard bearer, Lewis Hamilton just a name from the past on the same grid trying to find his way back to the light. No longer The Man.

It was easy to assign the usual cliches about age because the pattern fitted. Forty-one years old at the start of this season, how could he possibly perform like he was still in his twenties? But F1 is not athletics. Speed in the car is not about reaction times. Still, the doubts were there – and not only from the watching world but inside his own head too. The man who plaintively suggested Ferrari should “maybe look at getting another driver” last year after a particularly disastrous qualifying had the age question whirling around in his head. “After a year like last year, there were definitely moments that I was like, ‘Sheesh, maybe it is true that when you get to a certain point, you lose it.’”

But before he could know if that was the case, he needed a car which allowed him to drive in his natural way. Because since 2022 it was as if he had been running in the wrong shoes, so fundamentally did the ground effect cars strike at the heart of his particular way of driving.

Not only that, but the way Ferrari had developed its cars over the years meant that his problems with ground effect were only exacerbated. The whole aerodynamic concept of the car had been built around a mechanical set-up of extensive engine braking, which he hated. Furthermore, the brakes didn’t give him the confidence he sought on the pedal.

The 2026 regulations solved the first part of that equation. Without the ground effect venturi channels, the cars no longer needed a flat platform totally intolerant of the sort of pitch and dive Hamilton’s heavy braking would induce. More supple and compliant, the ’26 generation of car allows Hamilton to get that sharp early rotation into the corner without upsetting the rear on entry.