Ferrari found a useful race pace in Austin. Charles Leclerc finished second and Lewis Hamilton fourth, with both cars looking more comfortable on the hard C2 tyre in their closing stints. At Interlagos, that compound wasn’t available. Pirelli had chosen softer tyres, and two parts of the Brazilian circuit had been resurfaced.

Neither the Austin result nor last year’s Interlagos lap times offered a straightforward guide to how the SF-26 would behave.

Two Sections of Track Had Changed

Interlagos had fresh asphalt between Turns 3 and 5 and again between Turns 8 and 9. The layout remained familiar, but a new surface can change grip under braking and on corner exit. It can also affect tyre temperatures, particularly during a long stint when the same corners are taken lap after lap.

Friday running gave teams a chance to compare the track with their pre-event simulations. Tyre wear, fuel loads and changes in grip as rubber built up all fed into how teams revise race strategies. A gain in one resurfaced sector could look promising without telling the engineers much about how that tyre would behave fifteen laps later.

For Ferrari, that distinction was particularly relevant after the stronger race pace in Texas.

The Hard Tyre Was a Different Compound

Pirelli brought the C3, C4 and C5 to São Paulo, one step softer than the C2, C3 and C4 used in 2025. That meant the C3 carried the white hard-tyre marking, even though it wasn’t the same compound that had helped Ferrari in Austin.

The uncertainty extended to early F1 betting prices, which reflect expectations before teams have finished gathering reliable practice data. Those prices cannot show whether Ferrari can sustain its pace on the revised surface.

The labels describe the three choices available at a particular Grand Prix. They don’t mean the hard tyre at one venue will have the same characteristics as the hard tyre at another. The differences matter when a car looks stronger late in a race than it did during qualifying.

Ferrari couldn’t simply repeat its Austin stint plan and expect the SF-26 to respond in the same way. Interlagos asked different questions of the tyres, with new asphalt adding another variable.

Friday Pace Needed More Context

A quick lap doesn’t establish which car will manage its tyres best over a race distance. Teams have different fuel loads and programmes, and the timing sheet won’t tell spectators which of them is carrying the most fuel.

A Ferrari near the top on a fresh C5 might have been running a different test from a rival completing consecutive laps on C3. Even sector times need context when the surface has changed. It was the longer runs, rather than an isolated fast lap, that offered a better chance to understand Ferrari’s pace.

Austin Was Useful, Within Limits

At the United States Grand Prix, Ferrari ran soft, medium and hard tyres on the way to Leclerc’s second place and Hamilton’s fourth. The final stint offered the most encouraging signs, with the C2 giving both drivers more consistent pace.

Ferrari’s Austin tyre performance gave the team reason to examine longer-run data closely in Brazil. But the C2 was missing from the Interlagos allocation, and the SF-26 still needed to prove it could deliver similar consistency with the available compounds.

What the Timing Sheets Could Tell Ferrari

One quick lap could flatter the car, while a slow opening lap of a long run might hide decent pace once the tyres settled. Ferrari needed both types of data, plus a clear picture of how the new asphalt behaved through a stint.

Austin had provided genuine encouragement, but Brazil couldn’t be judged by the same tyre labels or the previous year’s sector times. A comparison of longer runs, compound behaviour and changing track conditions gives a fuller picture of Ferrari’s performance than any single practice result.