The historical significance of Lewis Hamilton finally winning a race with Ferrari at 41 years old overwhelms the nitty-gritty of how it was achieved, but that’s where the fascination lies. Because this was an incredibly finely-poised contest between Hamilton and the Mercedes team of George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, and with Lando Norris’ McLaren close enough to influence that battle.
The big picture of how Ferrari and Hamilton have arrived at the point where they can compete on equal terms with Mercedes and, with a following wind, win that fight is a story for another day (probably Wednesday). But the finer detail of how the competitive picture was poised around a very hot Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya this past weekend and how the playing of the game proceeded from that foundation, was wonderfully on a knife-edge.
Ferrari turned up to Spain with a very big upgrade, its second in four races. Being so productive in the cost cap era is quite an achievement. Even in the no-holds-barred spending era, this would have been impressive. From the tip of its new nose to the tail of its diffuser, a smart new set of clothes was draped around the already good SF26 chassis. Reshaped sidepods, floor boards and floor edges, innovative endplates with channelled undersides, a new leading edge of the floor, all working to energise the airflow around sidepods with a wider frontal area (to increase the force of the outwash and thereby the underfloor-created downforce) made F1’s fastest-cornering car even more so.
Then there’s the matter of whether the FIA’s confirmation that Ferrari will be allowed two PU upgrades this season under the ADUO mechanism allowed the team to no longer hide its engine light under a bushel. But in a season where to date the closest Ferrari has got to pole was a quarter-second (at Monaco), suddenly Hamilton popped up out of nowhere to put himself on the front row within six-hundredths of Russell’s Mercedes pole. Around F1’s most technically demanding track. How much was the upgrade, how much a power unit being given a freer set of running parameters? It’s impossible to know from the outside.
Ferrari arived in Spain with plenty of updates for its car
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Comparing the front row laps of Russell and Hamilton, the Ferrari’s deployment tails off a little earlier, but the deficit is smaller than so far this season. Hamilton’s (and Charles Leclerc’s) entry speeds are a little higher – and there’s only one corner for the Mercedes’ superior traction to dig into. So it’s a good layout for the Ferrari and if it’s coming off the corners faster, then its deployment deficit will be reduced.
So it was probably going to come down to race day tyre behaviour and strategy calls. This is where the Ferrari’s enhanced performance really made for a fascinating question. Because a tyre-shredding Barcelona track running for most of the weekend at around 50°C made the race strategy equation unsolvable in advance and the cars were evenly enough matched to make that the likely difference. There was probably going to be more race time difference between strategies than between the inherent speed of the two cars around here.
Practice suggested that on the compounds Pirelli had brought here (one step softer than last year and with this year’s higher minimum pressures) and the very high thermal degradation imposed by the track, a three-stop was likely. But with the proviso that deg always comes down as the track rubbers through the weekend. So moving it towards a two-stop. But how much so? How to judge that?
It was the classic Barcelona dilemma, with the picture changing in real time. How do you hit that moving target better than your rival? Here’s how Mercedes’ trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin described it back in 2020: “So the way these races go, you get going on the first stint and within sort of 10 or 12 laps you’re trying to build that picture of who’s got the quicker car, who’s looking after the tyres best, and we need to decide are we going to be playing a defensive strategy or are we in a position where we can build a gap and control the race. It’s one of those races where we’re not going to go in with a fixed plan.”
Ferrari made Hamilton’s three-stop strategy work
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The prospects of that contest were only enhanced as the tyre covers came off to reveal that Hamilton (and Max Verstappen, starting fifth in the Red Bull) had opted to start on the soft, the Mercs and McLarens on the medium. It suggested Ferrari was thinking of an aggressive three-stop and maybe Mercedes was thinking two. Without either of them really knowing in advance.
Ferrari was probably reckoning on Hamilton using the softs to win the start and so be on his way, building up that early gap which would allow him the extra stop. So it would have been disappointed at Russell holding his position from pole and Hamilton tucking in behind, ahead of Antonelli. Then even more disappointed as Russell steadily opened up a gap on the Ferrari. By the 10th lap the Mercedes was leading by 3.5sec and Antonelli was beginning to cut into Hamilton’s earlier 2sec margin.
Ferrari pulled the plug, Hamilton peeling in to swap his softs for hards at the end of lap 11. Decision time on the Mercedes pitwall. If they didn’t respond immediately, but Hamilton could somehow still do a two-stop, then Hamilton would be ahead after Russell made his stop. The fact that Hamilton had fitted the hard and not the available new medium suggested that’s what Ferrari was trying to do, so Mercedes pitted Russell the next lap and Antonelli two laps after that (both also fitted with hards). That way, Russell maintained track position.
Once Mercedes had done that, the obvious return serve move for Ferrari was to commit to the three-stop, with nothing to lose. Who had the faster car? From the first stint, it looked like Mercedes, but they were on a different tyre compound, so it was difficult to know. On stint 2, all three cars were on the hard – and Russell again gradually extended his lead over Hamilton to a couple of seconds. But… Antonelli was lapping much quicker than either after about 10 laps. With such high tyre deg, stopping three laps later than Hamilton was theoretically worth 0.9sec per lap subsequently. He had his earlier 6.5sec deficit to Hamilton down to just 1.5sec by lap 26. “Yeah, I was much happier on the hard than the medium,” reported Kimi. Russell reported the opposite. Furthermore, fourth-placed Norris was also quicker than the two leaders and keeping pace with Antonelli.
The Mercedes duo compromised each other
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So it looked like Mercedes – Antonelli’s at least – was faster than the Ferrari. Hamilton was brought in for his second stop on lap 27 (with 39 laps still to go) to fend off the undercut threat from Antonelli and Norris. He was fitted with a set of mediums.
“I think if I could’ve mirrored Lewis’ strategy and three-stopped, I could have stayed ahead,” said Russell afterwards. “But then maybe I’d have been vulnerable to Kimi if he stayed on a two-stop.”
Instead, Mercedes stayed firm with the two-stop plan, keeping both cars out there as Hamilton made dramatic use of his much newer tyres. Mercedes had compromised the ideal timing of the two-stop by responding at the first stops to Hamilton’s three-stop. Their decision was complicated by them not wishing to give either of their drivers a strategic advantage over the other when the team-mates are fighting for the world title. Mercedes reckoned it could use what it believed to be a small performance advantage to prevail over Hamilton without upsetting the internal applecart.
But the thermal deg even on the hards was so high that Hamilton on his new tyres was so much faster that he was putting himself in contention for the victory despite the extra stop. Russell and Antonelli made their second stops nine and 10 laps respectively after Hamilton, who assumed a 16sec lead. The theoretical pitstop time loss was 23sec so he looked set to emerge behind both Mercs but going much faster – the computer numbers were suggesting he would pass them both before the end.
Just before their second stops, Russell and Antonelli were dicing wheel-to-wheel, as the latter’s speed advantage over Russell on the hards was repeated, Antonelli was radioing that he was much faster but Mercedes was again adamant it couldn’t favour one over the other. It lost them around 1.5sec – which might have later proven to be crucial. But it never got that far.
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Mark Hughes
Fernando Alonso pulled off his broken Aston Martin at Turn 10 on the 40th lap. Although Hamilton was only at Turn 4, the VSC triggered by the incident stayed out long enough for Hamilton to make his third stop and get out on his new hard tyres still in the lead. On tyres six laps newer than Russell’s, he was more than half-a-second per lap faster, sometimes more. Alonso had just gifted Hamilton and Ferrari the certainty of a victory they might have been set for anyway.
Russell’s focus then became Antonelli, who was all over him like a rash and again radioing the team that he was much faster – and again received no help. He’d have to do this himself. Walking the high wire after a black and white warning flag for track limits, he eventually found his way by with a super-committed move into Turn 1. A lap later – three from the end – his PU stopped, just as Russell’s had in Canada. Leclerc retired from a distant sixth behind Max Verstappen on the same lap with no hydraulics. The contrast between his forlorn weekend and that of his team-mate could hardly have been sharper.
Hamilton’s victory number 106 could hardly have been more storied – and it was achieved on raw pace. He’s now second in the championship, 41 points behind Antonelli, a man less than half his age. Is it the final flourish of a great career, or the beginning of something more?
Like the strategy game pre-race at Barcelona, that’s unknowable right now. But a fascinating prospect.
