following his dismal 2025 season, following his breakthrough win
for Ferrari. Hamilton finally claimed a first grand prix win for
the Scuderia in the 2026 Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, his first
F1 success in 686 days, since the 2024 Belgian GP for Mercedes. It
follows a strong start to the season for the seven-time champion,
with podiums in China, Canada, and Monaco to place him second in
the drivers’ championship, 41 points behind leader Kimi Antonelli.
Hamilton suffered mentally during 2025 as he failed to gel with the
Ferrari, including branding himself as “useless” and telling
Ferrari to “sign another driver” after he qualified 12th in
Hungary. He ended the season with three straight Q1 exits, and
suffered the ignominy of qualifying last on pure pace for the first
time in his career in Las Vegas. This led to criticism that he
should retire, which the Briton admitted had affected him as he is
“only human”, as he described how he had “rebuilt” himself over
Christmas and the new year. “Well, I mean, I’m only human. So there
are moments where I see the stuff, and for sure there are moments
where I allowed it to get to me and penetrate deeply,” Hamilton
told media, including RacingNews365. “But then I went through a
sequence of unplugging from that matrix. I mentioned it last year,
I spent lots of time with family, lots of time with friends, real
people that know me, that have never doubted me, have stuck to and
by me my whole life. “And then I just went on the mission from
Christmas Day. I think just things that I know are to never
second-guess yourself, never doubt yourself. You’ve got to continue
to believe in yourself at the core. “Those are the things that I’ve
managed to reimplement into my mentality. I’ve rebuilt my mind to
this point to get myself back to where I was. “It’s a great
feeling to stand on that podium. It’s a good feeling to have the
horse on there at the top.”