Madrid was one of those Ferrari weekends that looked better at several different points than it did when the result was finally written down. Charles Leclerc finished fourth. Lewis Hamilton retired after only seven laps with a brake problem. On paper, that is not a weekend Ferrari will spend much time celebrating. But the car had been quick. Hamilton and Leclerc had both been competitive through practice, the pair qualified fourth and fifth, and Leclerc ended up leading a large part of the race because Ferrari left him out during the Virtual Safety Car period. He finally stopped on lap 48 and came home fourth, while Kimi Antonelli won ahead of Max Verstappen and Lando Norris. Bettors on Botswana betting know that is what makes Ferrari difficult to place as Formula 1 leaves Europe behind.
The speed was there, which almost makes it more frustrating
Hamilton said afterwards that Ferrari had the car to fight for the win before his brake problem ended his afternoon. That is a fairly significant detail when the final result shows one Ferrari in fourth and the other not classified. Leclerc’s race was different. Ferrari took the chance of keeping him out while the leaders stopped, hoping the timing might eventually work in his favour. It never quite did, but for a long stretch there was a red car at the front of the first Spanish Grand Prix held at Madring. So Madrid was not really a case of Ferrari being nowhere. It was a case of Ferrari leaving without much to show for being somewhere. For anyone looking at F1 betting during the remaining races, that makes Ferrari more awkward than a simple recent-results table suggests. The car has shown enough pace to make qualifying, podium and individual driver markets interesting, but Madrid also showed why reading the Friday and Saturday running matters.
Monza and Madrid told very different stories
A week earlier, Monza had already been uncomfortable. Ferrari qualified strongly at home, but Mercedes took the race through Antonelli, who came from 19th on the grid to win. Hamilton finished sixth and Leclerc’s race was also shaped by the opening-lap contact between the two Ferrari drivers, something Leclerc later took responsibility for. Then Ferrari arrived in Madrid and immediately looked more convincing again. That swing is probably the part worth watching now. The SF-26 has already won races this year. Ferrari does not need to prove that the car can have a good Sunday. It has done that. What it has not done often enough is arrive at the end of a weekend with both cars having extracted what the pace suggested was available.
The final stretch will not give Ferrari many quiet weekends
The championship now moves away from the European sequence and into a very different group of circuits. That matters for Ferrari because the remaining races are not variations of the same test. Street circuits, long straights, heat, tyre management and very different qualifying demands are still coming. Madrid therefore feels less like a conclusion and more like an unfinished sentence. Leclerc had enough pace to spend much of the afternoon at the front. Hamilton believed there was far more available before the brakes failed. Ferrari still left with twelve points from one car.
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