Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton branded his Thursday morning mileage “amazing” at Formula 1’s Barcelona ‘shakedown’.
As the world championship holds its first pre-season test behind closed doors amid 2026’s technical overhaul, with teams allowed to run on three days between 26 and 30 January, the Scuderia picked a Tuesday-Thursday-Friday strategy.
Both Charles Leclerc and Hamilton were on track on Tuesday, but the rain arrived mid-morning. Thursday was therefore Hamilton’s first representative mileage on a dry track with the SF-26, which only performed a 15km shakedown at Fiorano before going to Barcelona.
The seven-time world champion completed 87 laps according to SoyMotor’s unofficial timing data, which he took solace in, considering “miserable wet weather” previously hampered the team’s effort.
Asked by F1 whether Ferrari was where it expected to be at this stage, Hamilton tentatively replied: “Um, I don't know, I think we're probably... Of course, we hoped that we could come and have... When you come to the test, you always want to get a lot of mileage, like today I did 85 laps in the morning, which is amazing. And that's really down to all the people at the factory who've done such a great job to make sure the car so far is really reliable.
“Last year we had a worse start to testing, so considering it's a completely new band of rules, it's better than we've experienced in the past. So I'm really hopeful that continues.”
Delving into this morning’s running in more depth, Hamilton explained: “It was great to be able to get some running and understand the tyres. We did the C2 and the C1, so cold that the tyres are not really working so much, but got through our programme, and a bit of an understanding of where the car is at and where we need to improve.”
Leclerc took the SF-26 over for the afternoon with Hamilton following the proceedings from the pitwall, before both drivers presumably return to the track on Friday with a busy plan.
“For us it's, still continue to try and get as much mileage and knowledge on this engine and on the car and the aero side,” the Briton detailed. “So there'll be lots. We went through a program this morning, found some learnings. Charles is doing a different set this afternoon, which is great.
“My role is to, like, listen as much as possible. At the end of the day, we both come together and we both talk about our problems and the positives and the negatives. Then we'll come up with a plan of like what we want to tackle tomorrow as our last day. But already, we've got good data so far. So it's just understanding that and making sure you're making really clear and concise decisions in terms of what to test moving forwards before we get to Bahrain.”
