Red Revival? Lewis Hamilton Optimistic About Ferrari's SF-26 After Barcelona Shakedown

Lewis Hamilton walked away from Ferrari’s Barcelona shakedown with something he didn’t have much of last season: optimism.

Day four of Formula One’s behind-closed-doors pre-season running at the Circuit de Catalunya saw Hamilton clock up a hefty 85 laps in the morning, calling the workload “amazing” as Ferrari ticked off crucial mileage under the sport’s biggest rules reset in years.

#F1Testing | Lewis Hamilton on whether they are where they want to be as a team:

“I don’t know… When you come to the test you always want to get a lot of mileage, today I did 85 laps in the morning, which is amazing and that’s really down to all the people back at the factory… pic.twitter.com/s7BeZUWL16

— deni (@fiagirly) January 29, 2026

“When you come to a test, you always

want a lot of mileage,” Hamilton said. “Last year, we had a worse start to testing. Considering it’s a completely new band of rules, this is better than what we’ve experienced in the past.”

Ferrari are coming off a bruising campaign in which they failed to win a race and slipped to fourth in the constructors’ standings.

For Hamilton, now in his second season with the Scuderia after joining from Mercedes at the end of 2024, it was even tougher — a winless, podium-free year that snapped an 18-season streak of at least one victory.

Barcelona, though, offered a small but meaningful reset. Rain ruined much of Tuesday’s running, making Thursday Hamilton’s first proper dry outing. He completed his programme before handing the car over to Charles Leclerc, saying he now has “a bit of an understanding of where the car is at and where we need to improve.”

Ferrari have chosen three of the five available test days — Tuesday, Thursday and Friday — to run their new car in Spain, looking to lay a solid foundation ahead of official testing.

Next up: two open tests in Bahrain before the season opener in Australia on March 8.

(with agency inputs)