Hamilton cries in Italian: Ferrari’s first victory in Barcelona, the 106th

Hamilton and Verstappen pitted as early as lap 11; Russell followed suit two laps later, Norris on lap 14 and Antonelli on lap 15. Leclerc, who started tenth after his mistake in qualifying, extended his first stint and for a few laps took a provisional lead that was more useful to his strategy than to his actual position in the standings. That was when Ferrari began to make sense of Hamilton’s Sunday: not chasing a single window, but accepting a three-stop race, consistent with tyre degradation, track temperature and the need not to get stuck behind the Mercedes.

Over the radio, he wasn’t happy with the timing of the first call, because he knew he could end up exposed to Antonelli. And the Mercedes issue became the second key factor in the race. On lap 36, the pit wall called in Russell first, leaving Antonelli out for one more lap. It was a precautionary move, but also a matter of internal politics: Toto Wolff could not humiliate the pole-sitter by openly asking him to let his team-mate through. At the same time, the stopwatch was revealing an uncomfortable truth: in the middle stages, Antonelli had the pace and tyres to put Russell under pressure.

The decisive moment came shortly afterwards. Fernando Alonso, who had started from the pit lane in a struggling Aston Martin, ended up on the grass and came to a halt on lap 41, triggering the Virtual Safety Car. For Alonso, that VSC has a bitter taste that goes beyond the standings: Montmeló is the track of his home victories, in 2006 with Renault and 2013 with Ferrari — the latter still his last career win to this day. To finish like this, from the pit lane, on the track where he had triumphed at that level, feels like a sporting epitaph. But his stop also had an immediate technical impact: Verstappen pitted, Ferrari called Hamilton in for his third stop, and the Briton rejoined the race still in the lead.

From then on, Hamilton’s race was all about managing the situation. Ferrari emerged from the VSC with a clear run ahead, fresh tyres and a growing lead. By lap 48, Hamilton was the fastest of the lot, even faster than Verstappen on his medium tyres. With ten laps to go, his lead over Russell was already over twelve seconds, a sign that Ferrari had not only benefited from the safety car period but had turned it into a result because they had the pace to make it decisive.

Behind him, Mercedes had a tougher race than Russell’s second-place finish suggests. Antonelli, having spent a long time in his team-mate’s slipstream, overtook him on lap 61 at the first corner. This was the most telling statistic for the Brackley team: although perhaps someone on the pit wall was ‘pushing’ for Russell to score vital points, the head-to-head battle told a different story. Before the shutdown, the Italian had overtaken him on the track. For the second time in a few weeks, following the Canadian duel that ended with Russell’s retirement, Antonelli gave the impression of clearly having the edge in the internal team battle. Then the power unit brought him to a halt, through no fault of his own.

Norris literally inherited the podium: a solid but by no means dominant performance from McLaren on Sunday. Verstappen showed flashes of pace, including a fast lap on the medium tyres in the middle of the race, but he never had the position or the consistency to really challenge for the win. The rest of the points-scoring zone is irrelevant, apart from the unexpected feat of two Alpines finishing in the points, with the exception of the retirements: eight cars out is a lot on a track that often selects drivers based more on tyre degradation than on mechanical failures.

The day at Ferrari, precisely because it was such a huge one for Hamilton, proved tough for Leclerc. The Monegasque driver had gone into Sunday already weighed down by Saturday’s events: his second crash in six days, following Monaco, and clear-cut words about his own responsibility. He had said he was “ashamed of the mistake”, ruling out that the change in braking material to match Hamilton’s feel was the cause. He made up ground in the race, then pitted himself. Ferrari returns to winning ways with Hamilton, but the other side of the garage is going through its toughest spell since the internal dynamic began to shift. Following the contract renewal, two costly mistakes and a retirement are hardly minor details.

Barcelona also shed some light on the new 2026 technical cycle. The energy aspect was less visible than the pit stops, but it played a significant role in the race analysis. With the 2026 power units, it is not enough to have speed at the end of the straight: you have to decide where to use energy, where to recover it and how to avoid running out of power at the points of attack or defence. Montmeló is a track offering various scenarios that provide an indicative overall assessment of the project’s quality, rather than a judgement on the engine alone. A true test bed that has pushed both top and lower-ranked teams to their limits.

The race’s new name is no mere formality. Montmeló is no longer the Spanish Grand Prix: that title will pass to Madrid, with the IFEMA project and a commercial platform more in line with modern F1. Catalonia has defended its event with investment, spectators and a top-tier economic impact, but its continued presence is now a compromise. For Europe, this is a sign: it is not losing ground simply because Asia or the United States are advancing, but because its traditional circuits are competing with one another over TV and sponsorship budgets, hospitality, accessibility and local returns.