Ferrari has decided not to close the book on the SF-26 early. Frédéric Vasseur has indicated that Maranello intends to continue developing the car at least until the United States Grand Prix in Austin, where the final upgrade package of significant size is expected to arrive. The decision says a great deal about Ferrari’s current position: the team still wants answers from its 2026 car before fully shifting its technical focus towards 2027.
Continuing to spend resources on the current car carries an obvious risk. Mercedes has already indicated that it intends to concentrate most of its work on 2027, even though a substantial Singapore package had already been defined some time ago, while Red Bull is using much of its remaining development work to better understand the tyre degradation problems affecting its race performance. Ferrari, however, believes there is still value in developing the SF-26 as part of its preparation for 2027.
That approach means accepting a calculated risk. Either Ferrari genuinely believes the SF-26 has not yet shown everything it is capable of, or it simply cannot afford to abandon the project without understanding how far it could have gone. Both interpretations lead towards the same objective: learning how to evolve a concept that will provide part of the foundation for next year’s car.
Ferrari still needs to understand the SF-26’s true potential
The second possibility is perhaps the more interesting one. A team of Ferrari’s stature cannot simply write off a season with the feeling that it never fully understood its own car. That is the question now hanging over Maranello: how much of the SF-26’s potential has actually been exploited?
The challenge is made more complicated by what rival teams are doing. Mercedes, for example, is already balancing its own current development against preparations for the future, with the wider Mercedes W17 upgrade situation illustrating how difficult that transition can be even for the championship-leading organisation.
Ferrari’s early progress has gradually been eroded
The season initially appeared to be heading in a very different direction. Ferrari began the campaign as the second-fastest team, with a car capable of running behind Mercedes and, crucially, with the prospect of gradually reducing the gap through development.
Barcelona provided the first concrete breakthrough with Lewis Hamilton’s victory. That was followed by the triumph at Silverstone and Charles Leclerc’s second place at Spa-Francorchamps. For a time, the results suggested that Ferrari had started an upward performance curve.
Instead, from that point onwards, the level of performance gradually began to deteriorate. Hungary and Zandvoort produced a less convincing Ferrari than expected. Monza brought a sixth-place finish, while Charles Leclerc’s mistake further complicated the team’s weekend. Madrid then presented an even harsher picture, with Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull ahead, Ferrari forced to chase, and Charles Leclerc finishing fourth at a distance from the front that could not be explained purely by the circumstances of the race.
The problem, therefore, is not confined to one circuit. It is the SF-26’s difficulty in maintaining its competitiveness when the operating conditions change. The car can be quick, but it does not always convert that speed into race pace. It can produce an encouraging single-lap performance and then lose consistency when tyre management becomes more important, particularly on certain compounds. At Madring, for example, the car responded poorly on the soft tyres.
Those fluctuations are part of the broader technical picture Ferrari is still trying to understand, with further analysis of the SF-26’s behaviour, upgrades and tyre characteristics available in the Ferrari technical analysis section.
Ferrari still faces a power-unit deficit with ADUO-2
This is where the discussion inevitably becomes technical. Part of Ferrari’s deficit continues to come from the power unit. Even after the introduction of ADUO-2, the Scuderia has not completely closed the gap to the Mercedes and Red Bull Ford Powertrains units in terms of performance and efficiency.
The difference does not necessarily appear dramatically in every sector of every circuit, but it becomes more significant when it has to be sustained throughout an entire race and combined with the aerodynamic behaviour of the car. The detailed Ferrari versus Mercedes power-unit comparison also highlights why outright engine output alone does not explain the complete performance picture.
There is another, even more delicate issue on top of that: understanding the complete package.
McLaren has progressively learned to make better use of the Mercedes HPP power unit during the season while simultaneously working on aerodynamics and the tyre operating window. When a team succeeds in bringing all three elements together, the improvement does not necessarily come from one major technical revolution. Instead, it comes from the accumulation of many smaller details that finally stop working against one another. Ferrari does not yet appear to have reached that point.
Austin will show whether Ferrari is chasing the present or building for 2027
The decision to continue developing the SF-26 therefore follows a clear logic. It does not mean Ferrari has chosen to sacrifice 2027 for the sake of the current championship; doing so would make little sense. Rather, before permanently shifting the centre of gravity towards the next project, Maranello wants to understand whether the current car still has something valuable to teach.
The transition to 2027 will not simply involve evolving today’s car. The different balance between thermal and electrical energy, the methods of energy recovery and the aerodynamic changes will alter the way the chassis and power unit have to interact. Ferrari’s risk would be carrying unresolved problems into the next project without having properly identified them on the current one.
That is why Austin takes on particular significance. Baku, Malaysia and Singapore effectively form the build-up to that moment, a triple-header during which Ferrari will primarily need to limit the damage, gather data and manage a technical situation that has not yet been completely resolved. The full sequence of the remaining events can be followed through the 2026 Formula 1 calendar.
Baku in particular will provide another demanding examination of Ferrari’s current package, with the long acceleration zones placing considerable emphasis on energy deployment. The FIA’s designated 2026 Baku Straight Mode zones and their implications for the SF-26 underline how important power-unit efficiency could become during that weekend.
Ferrari’s broader Baku outlook also reflects the development questions surrounding the SF-26. In Austin, however, the Scuderia should finally have a sufficiently updated car to conduct a more reliable assessment of the project’s remaining potential.
The Austin upgrade is about understanding performance, not only finding it
The objective is not simply to make the car faster. Ferrari needs to understand why it becomes faster, if the new package delivers the expected improvement.
A positive response at the Circuit of the Americas could be worth far more than the championship points collected that weekend. It could demonstrate that part of the performance left untapped during the season can still be recovered by following the correct development direction.
If, on the other hand, the new package fails to materially change Ferrari’s position relative to its rivals, it would become much harder to argue that the SF-26 still possesses useful development margin that can serve as a foundation for future work.
Power-unit penalties add another complication for Ferrari
There is also the question of the engines. The mileage accumulated during the season and the demands placed on the available components make it likely that both Ferrari drivers will have to serve at least one penalty related to power-unit usage.
The issue is therefore not simply whether to take a penalty, but where to take it. That decision will also have to fit into Ferrari’s wider strategy for defending second place in the Constructors’ Championship, which remains the team’s only concrete objective.
This is where Ferrari’s season takes on an almost paradoxical dimension. The team still needs to develop the SF-26 because several technical questions remain unanswered, yet at the same time it must already be building the power unit and car for 2027. Maranello has to invest in the present without compromising the future.
Frédéric Vasseur faces a difficult development balance
The pressure is inevitably significant. Ferrari is not a team that is easily granted the luxury of treating a season purely as a laboratory. Victory has been absent for too long for every setback to be viewed simply as a normal fluctuation within a technical cycle. In Italy, the pressure generated by the surrounding environment and the media also tends to magnify every result and every management decision.
Frédéric Vasseur and his technical group therefore find themselves in a situation without a risk-free solution. Stopping development immediately would mean giving up potentially valuable information. Continuing for too long, however, would mean taking resources away from the project that must correct the weaknesses exposed this year.
The decision to continue until Austin is, ultimately, a way of buying a little more time.
But time in Formula 1 only has value if it can be transformed into knowledge. Ferrari must demonstrate that the effort invested in the SF-26 is not simply more time lost before another season that is supposed to represent the real turning point.
If the final major package can restore some of the competitiveness the car has lost, then continuing development will have made sense. If it cannot, the technical verdict will become much simpler: the limit had not yet been reached only because Ferrari had not fully understood where that limit actually was.
For a team trying to build its way back towards the top of Formula 1, that distinction matters far more than a handful of additional championship points.
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