Mercedes is the target
The chase has begun. After the season-opening race in Australia, it became clear to everyone that two teams currently dominate the top of Formula 1: Mercedes, dominant both in qualifying and race pace and which many believe may have hidden part of its true power, and Ferrari, the first – and perhaps at the moment the only – pursuer of the Silver Arrows, capable in Melbourne of using its strong starts to complicate life for George Russell and Kimi Antonelli.
A race for developments
Speaking with journalists in China, Lewis Hamilton tried to quantify his former team’s advantage over Maranello, while also showing optimism about Ferrari’s chances of closing the gap with the W22, currently the benchmark in this new era of regulations. “I think it depends a lot on development,” said the seven-time world champion. “The pace of development is quite strong for everyone at the moment, so people will be curious to see who brings updates in the next races.”
“Mercedes has a big advantage,” the #44 driver acknowledged. “I mean, you saw it in qualifying. They had something like eight tenths of a second advantage or thereabouts. In the race, I think the gap was between four and five tenths when they were in clean air, which is a huge difference. So it will be really interesting to see the development. We will try to catch them, and I think we will, but I can’t say that with absolute certainty.”
“Where are they ahead? It seems mainly on the straights. When they open the aerodynamics, that’s when they make a big step forward. So anything that happens in that phase is something we need to understand, and then they also seem to have a bit more power,” Lewis Hamilton concluded.
Lewis Hamilton’s pragmatic assessment highlights the mountain Ferrari still has to climb to reclaim the top step of the podium. While the SF-26 has proven to be a reliable and balanced machine, the “huge” half-second gap in race pace suggests that Mercedes has mastered the integration of the 2026 power unit and active aero more effectively. As the circus moves to the long straights of Shanghai, Ferrari’s engineers are working around the clock to unlock the straight-line speed the Briton identified as their main weakness. The season is a marathon, not a sprint, and if Maranello can deliver on their aggressive upgrade path, the Silver Arrows might find their mirrors filled with scarlet much sooner than expected. The development war has only just begun.
