2026 Scuderia Ferrari HP F1 Team

[Just_a_fan]

I watched the entire race and I was a bit baffled. Hamilton looked really strong early on until... he didn't. Tires really fell of a cliff it seems. Bit of a hail mary to pit Hamilton during VSC for softs. Did not really work out (doh). Leclerc looked a bit slow from the start tbh. Power deficit was pretty clear imo (clearest it has been to me anyway). It was a weird race for Ferrari, a lot worse than I expected.

Hamilton was ok until he swapped on to the hard tyre. Then he struggled for pace. The switch to the used soft seemed to be a roll of the dice. It sort of worked but once back on to the hard for the last stint the pace went away again.

Leclerc seemingly took some front wing damage from contact with Piastri although he didn't look quick enough before them either. He's having one of those periods of "the car doesn't suit me" that hits all drivers at some point and sees them struggle for pace - amazing how you can lose half a second of pace because you don't feel at one with the car, but it happens all the time. I expect he'll come back pretty soon.

[Just_a_fan]

Glad to see so many posters back again, has it really been 4 years already?

guess why?

Some people have had bans which obviously keeps one away...

[Artur Craft]

This car hasn't offered credible challenge on traction-dependent and power tracks. Not sure what mechanical attributes yield great traction...low cg, low moment of inertia along x,y,z axis?

Those are great for any car, in general, but I don´t see how they can be the dominant factors responsible for great traction. I would say those would mostly impact cornering, an area in which Ferrari´s car seem to excel this year

Barcelona was very hot too and eventhough Ferrari profited from the correct choice of 3 stops, Verstappen/RB also opted for that and were miles off the pace of Hamilton. This time, RB was much quicker but maybe it wasn´t just due to the updates. Tyres are called "black magic", or whatever, for a reason. Not even the most qualified engineers at tyre manufacturers fully understand everything that is at play with friction.

Maybe Ferrari will perform much better at Silverstone, even with hot conditions.(not to beat Mercedes but to be faster than Mclaren and RB)

Did ADUO make a difference? Power deficit felt bigger than Barcelona.

It seems it made very little difference for those who took it.

Glad to see so many posters back again, has it really been 4 years already?

guess why?

Some people have had bans which obviously keeps one away...

Did you get banned ?

I was very surprised at some point towards the end of last year when I logged in here and saw a message that I was banned for 3 months for constantly bashing Hamilton. I was not checking my private messages so I didn´t know the mods were telling me to stop, so it happened. But I was still surprised because I wasn´t calling names on any member or being agressive towards anyone in here. It was just because of my "dislike" of the hype surrounding Lewis. If you (Just_a_fan) didn´t offend anyone and got banned, I´m sorry. I don´t think that´s 100% fair either. I guess the mods want the discussion to be more about the cars and technical stuff rather than the usual "this driver is better than the other one" discussions that are so common on F1 forums since ever

[f1316]

Ooof that was a tough watch - probably the worst car performance of the year. Hamilton’s strategy was baffling but I don’t think it changed the result much - the pace just wasn’t there. Seems like it’s some amount setup, some amount lack of deployment (and possibly pushing the setup too much to try and compensate for the lack of deployment?).

I don’t know what to think about Silverstone. The fast corners ought to be our forte but the amount of full throttle might cancel that out. The big ADUO upgrade is severely needed but then we also have to be mindful that Mercedes get one too. I hoped the first ADUO would have done more to bridge the gap than it has - hopefully there’s more from the software side to optimise (?).

Basically not a good day.

[Just_a_fan]

Did you get banned ?

Yeah, twice and for much longer than 3 months. So I now partake less than I used to which I'm sure many won't be too sad about.

[Sidiamal]

I watched the entire race and I was a bit baffled. Hamilton looked really strong early on until... he didn't. Tires really fell of a cliff it seems. Bit of a hail mary to pit Hamilton during VSC for softs. Did not really work out (doh). Leclerc looked a bit slow from the start tbh. Power deficit was pretty clear imo (clearest it has been to me anyway). It was a weird race for Ferrari, a lot worse than I expected.

It kinda felt like watching Miami and Suzuka again. The SF-26 when it can keep its rear tyres in the window is a race car as good as any on the grid but once it overheats them the pace simply drops off a cliff. A feature of these regs is that once you start having wheelspin and sliding it's compounded because you can't recover energy, you can't deploy energy, you lose even more lap time than the simple thermal deg would suggest and it's a vicious cycle.

[Jdn1327]

I watched the entire race and I was a bit baffled. Hamilton looked really strong early on until... he didn't. Tires really fell of a cliff it seems. Bit of a hail mary to pit Hamilton during VSC for softs. Did not really work out (doh). Leclerc looked a bit slow from the start tbh. Power deficit was pretty clear imo (clearest it has been to me anyway). It was a weird race for Ferrari, a lot worse than I expected.

Hamilton was ok until he swapped on to the hard tyre. Then he struggled for pace. The switch to the used soft seemed to be a roll of the dice. It sort of worked but once back on to the hard for the last stint the pace went away again.

Leclerc seemingly took some front wing damage from contact with Piastri although he didn't look quick enough before them either. He's having one of those periods of "the car doesn't suit me" that hits all drivers at some point and sees them struggle for pace - amazing how you can lose half a second of pace because you don't feel at one with the car, but it happens all the time. I expect he'll come back pretty soon.

It is very odd because both ferrari drivers prefer the harder of the tyres because the both lean on the tyre more. The harder tyres today seemed a step backwards for them. Weird.

[Gillian]

guess why?

What did he do? I only watched the last 25 laps.

Hard for me to say anything about the race but, going by the results, without proper context, it seems Ferrari is back at 4th car place. Red Bull took a big jump with their updated car and threatened Mercedes while doing the same strategy (2 stops) and no VSC fluke, unlike Ferrari.

Red Bull had a very poor car at the first few races (bar Melbourne) and was fighting Audi.Now they are fighting Mercedes while Ferrari is not improving enough.

Over the years, it has been shown that Red Bull and Mclaren are the teams that are most capable of in-season development while Ferrari tends to start well and then fails to update the cars in a satisfying pace. Silverstone will paint a clearer picture but the trend seems to be continuing...

I watched the entire race and I was a bit baffled. Hamilton looked really strong early on until... he didn't. Tires really fell of a cliff it seems. Bit of a hail mary to pit Hamilton during VSC for softs. Did not really work out (doh). Leclerc looked a bit slow from the start tbh. Power deficit was pretty clear imo (clearest it has been to me anyway). It was a weird race for Ferrari, a lot worse than I expected.

In my opinion, the setup of the car was fundamentally wrong. Lewis complained very early on that the car was oversteering everywhere.

They took two or three graduations of front Wing out with each stop,

They made Lewis switch to a lower engine mode several times because of heat concerns.

And it didn't seem like they could fully get the hards in the window on any stint.

Yeah you're probably right, that sums it up pretty much.

[PlatinumZealot]

Fred said they tried to keep up with Mercs and that burnt their tyres out. Still, it wasn't much better they could do anyway. Best was probably 4th place.

[venkyhere]

I watched the entire race and I was a bit baffled. Hamilton looked really strong early on until... he didn't. Tires really fell of a cliff it seems. Bit of a hail mary to pit Hamilton during VSC for softs. Did not really work out (doh). Leclerc looked a bit slow from the start tbh. Power deficit was pretty clear imo (clearest it has been to me anyway). It was a weird race for Ferrari, a lot worse than I expected.

It kinda felt like watching Miami and Suzuka again. The SF-26 when it can keep its rear tyres in the window is a race car as good as any on the grid but once it overheats them the pace simply drops off a cliff. A feature of these regs is that once you start having wheelspin and sliding it's compounded because you can't recover energy, you can't deploy energy, you lose even more lap time than the simple thermal deg would suggest and it's a vicious cycle.

Very good point. I think this was discussed way back around January/February in one of the PU/regulation threads. How tyre preservation is even more important in this 50:50 regs then the previous 80:20 regs.

[gearboxtrouble]

Wonder if the small turbo hurts them at altitude. They haven't been good around here in a while iirc and that seems to coincide with their "response" focused engine concept that they pivoted to for the GE era. I think they plan to change the turbo in future upgrades, not the one they introduced here. They definitely seemed a good chunk behind from Mercedes and RBPT engined cars on straight line performance. The fast corners at Silverstone should suit them better imo.

[Luscion]

Ferrari obviously had an off day. The main factor, which drags down pretty much everything, is the abnormally severe lack of power/energy on the Power Unit side, which on a layout like this was devastating. On top of that, an inadequate setup came into play, very front-loaded, which maximized the soft tire's performance and qualifying lap time, but in the race ended up exposing the rear to overheating. I don't think these are unrelated issues: in the attempt to maximize cornering performance to minimize the power gap, they tried shifting the balance forward, but in the end the rear that was cooking prevailed, joining forces with the lack of horsepower in an inevitably devastating mix. Good race from #Hamilton, with a super overtake on lap 1 against a #Leclerc who today was clearly struggling more than him

[ToffeeTyres]

It was like we had different tyre compounds to others in front even if tyres didn’t drop off like they did our battery harvesting and deployment is shocking worst on the grid and that needs sorting ASAP! That is our main thing that seriously needs addressing then we will be much closer on a regular basis. For now it will be track and track temperature dependent and of course if tyres stay in perfect operating window. Hate these Pirelli prescriptive tyres

[Artur Craft]

Did you get banned ?

Yeah, twice and for much longer than 3 months. So I now partake less than I used to which I'm sure many won't be too sad about.

I remember your comments always being so polite(despite our disagreements here and there), what crime have you committed ?!

To say something more on topic about Ferrari. Silverstone tends to be more cloudy, rainy, thus less hot. Also, Pirelli will not take C5,C4,C3 there. So, Ferrari should be able to cope better with tyre degradation. If there isn´t a significant bounce there, it could be ominous

[Xyz22]

This is the first year in a long time that Ferrari has a driver problem. Leclerc is performing like Massa at the end of his career, absolutely awful. This makes Hamilton look decent but he is miles slower than Antonelli and Max.

Not looking good. This is going another very long and disappointing season.