Ferrari emerged badly bruised from its September races. After Barcelona had created the belief that the team could challenge Mercedes for the Constructors’ Championship, Madrid and Baku effectively extinguished those hopes. McLaren moved ahead of Ferrari following its Budapest upgrades, while Maranello has yet to respond to the British team’s development and has operated as roughly the third- or fourth-fastest force since Monza.
The five races before the summer break had shown a strong and effective Ferrari, capable of taking two major opportunities in Barcelona and Silverstone to return to winning ways after a year and a half. That momentum disappeared after the break. It was already clear that the Zandvoort and Monza upgrades would determine the direction of Ferrari’s second half of the season, but four races later the objectives in both championships have been significantly reduced, particularly in the Constructors’ standings.
Ferrari scored only 40 points between Monza and Baku, compared with 103 across the three races before the summer break. That reflects both a loss of competitiveness and execution problems that have effectively removed the team from the championship fight. The wider competitive picture became especially clear in Azerbaijan, where the question of whether Ferrari had slipped to fourth in the F1 pecking order became increasingly relevant. Amid the intense media attention that developed between Zandvoort and Monza, however, the real reason behind the disappointing results of the past month may have received less attention.
Ferrari still missing more than two tenths after Zandvoort
Just when Ferrari was expected to make another step forward, the opposite happened. It is a familiar pattern for Maranello: a step backwards arriving at precisely the moment when progress might have moved the team closer to the very top.
At Zandvoort and Monza, the tense atmosphere surrounding Ferrari’s two drivers overshadowed the first signs that the new floor had not delivered enough improvement to close the gap to McLaren and Mercedes. That was also a consequence of Ferrari not introducing the entire Dutch upgrade package, after the full specification produced results in the wind tunnel that were not convincing enough.
Madrid and Baku then produced a clearer verdict, with the SF-26 behind the other three leading teams on outright performance. According to several analyses by the Italian media, Ferrari has been missing more than two tenths across the past four races compared with the general rate of development across the grid.
That is the performance Ferrari ideally needed to find from an upgrade package positioned between the Barcelona development and the major step scheduled for Austin. The Zandvoort floor therefore served more as a foundation for the final major development of the season than as a significant performance gain in its own right. Ferrari’s changing position against Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull can also be followed through the Ferrari vs F1 Rivals statistics.
Making progress at Sepang and, above all, Austin will be crucial not only to finish the season strongly, but also to give Ferrari a better technical base heading into 2027 and restore confidence around the project.
McLaren has developed and Mercedes will upgrade at Sepang
During the Budapest weekend, Andrea Stella made clear that McLaren believed finding at least half a second would be essential to remain competitive through the end of the season. Ferrari, meanwhile, appears to have found more than two tenths through its new ADUO 2 power unit, but the SF-26 is still waiting for a further contribution from aerodynamic development.
The horsepower increase delivered by Ferrari’s second ADUO has been questioned in recent weeks, but the telemetry from Monza, Madrid and Baku indicates that the updated power unit contributed as expected. Lewis Hamilton nevertheless highlighted the scale of the remaining overall deficit.
“We know perfectly well that every race weekend we start with a deficit of four tenths, which in some cases reaches six,” Lewis Hamilton said.
On the other side, McLaren’s double upgrade package across Budapest and Zandvoort allowed the MCL40 to overtake the SF-26 as the strongest car through the corners. In the Netherlands and Spain, McLaren was the benchmark in the twisty sections, and its competitiveness will need to be reassessed in Malaysia. Without a cornering advantage to compensate, Ferrari’s power-unit deficit becomes even more significant.
Sepang should at least offer conditions that could better suit the SF-26, with the tyre compounds selected for Sepang potentially favouring Ferrari more than Baku. Charles Leclerc nevertheless remained cautious when discussing Ferrari’s immediate prospects on Thursday in Malaysia.
“We will have some things on the car and we hope they help us to be ahead of Red Bull and McLaren. However, I don’t think it will be enough to fight Mercedes,” Charles Leclerc said.
Ferrari has approved four development packages, with the final one scheduled to arrive at the end of October. Before then, however, the team must deal with an already-updated McLaren and another Mercedes development step. McLaren has already improved a car that has been the strongest package at three of the past five race weekends, while Mercedes is preparing to improve what has been the best overall package on the grid. The latest Mercedes W17 upgrade for Sepang therefore adds further pressure to Ferrari’s own development programme.
Does Ferrari also need more from Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc?
Ferrari’s main shortcomings are performance-related, but another question concerns whether the team has also lacked the extra contribution from its drivers that it has often enjoyed in previous seasons.
Nobody in the paddock can reasonably point to Ferrari’s drivers as the primary problem for a team that has historically attracted some of the strongest names on the grid. Even so, other drivers have appeared to make a greater difference this season. Kimi Antonelli and Lando Norris in particular have changed the competitive picture, replacing the Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and George Russell trio that had stood out above the rest in 2024 and 2025. Max Verstappen has also produced a highly competitive season.
There have been only a handful of seasons over the past 15 years in which neither Ferrari driver could be considered among the very best performers on the grid. The question is whether 2026 could eventually be added to that list.
The new regulations have changed what is required from drivers and have created serious difficulties for some who excelled under the previous generation of cars, including George Russell and Oscar Piastri. Charles Leclerc also experienced difficulties, particularly during the middle part of the season, partly because of the regulations but not exclusively because of them.
Compared with George Russell and Oscar Piastri, Charles Leclerc’s talent has allowed him to remain competitive. In performance terms, the difference to Lewis Hamilton is measured in hundredths of a second, but that still represents a step backwards from the standards Charles Leclerc has established in previous seasons. Their season-long comparison can be explored through the Charles Leclerc vs Lewis Hamilton F1 head-to-head statistics.
Lewis Hamilton, meanwhile, has recovered after struggling with the characteristics of the ground-effect generation, although the seven-time Formula 1 world champion is no longer performing at the level he once reached.
It cannot be ruled out that the extreme competitiveness between Ferrari’s two drivers makes their individual contributions harder to identify. Even so, the impression is that Ferrari has at times lacked the additional factor from its drivers that had often made a difference in previous seasons.
Azerbaijan offered one example. Charles Leclerc has traditionally made an enormous difference around Baku compared with much of the grid. He performed well again this year, but did not reproduce some of the exceptional performances seen there in previous seasons.
Sepang’s layout should suit the characteristics of the SF-26 better than Baku, but the leading positions still appear difficult to reach. Ferrari therefore enters the next phase of the season needing both immediate progress and a convincing final development step if it is to recover the performance that has been missing since Zandvoort and establish a stronger foundation for 2027.
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