Four races in. Joint fourth in the championship on 51 points. One podium already this season — at China, his first as a Ferrari driver[2]. By any rational reading that is a good start. Except Lewis Hamilton's career was never measured by rational readings — it was measured against Verstappen-era dominance and seven-world-title swagger, and against that yardstick, the start to 2026 looks like a slow burn.
The truth is in between. Let me walk through what the data actually shows.
Where Hamilton sits today
Source: formula1.com/en/results/2026/drivers
Antonelli leads with 100 points after four rounds[1]. Russell — who won the season-opener in Australia — sits second on 80. Leclerc has 59 for Ferrari. Hamilton is on 51, tied with Lando Norris[3].
The headline read is "Hamilton mid-pack". The honest read is "Hamilton in a Ferrari that is no longer the fastest car, on a grid where Mercedes has built a monster — and he has already out-scored his Mercedes-era 2024 self after just four rounds".
The China podium changed the narrative
The single most important data point of Hamilton's 2026 is the China podium[2]. Third place in Shanghai, beating Leclerc by three and a half seconds in a wheel-to-wheel intra-team duel that changed lead nearly a dozen times. For a driver still being asked "can he still do it at this level", that was the answer in real time.
The race after — Japan — was a relative regression (P6, behind Leclerc again). Miami was P7 after the SF-26's race pace fell away in the second half. Two ordinary results sandwiched a brilliant one. But that brilliant one matters.
The qualifying gap to Leclerc is closing
Source: FIA timing
The chart that matters most for any new-team Hamilton evaluation is the intra-team qualifying gap. In year one (2025), that gap averaged 0.34 seconds across the season. Through four rounds of year two, the trend is good. Australia was a tough opener — Hamilton 0.42 seconds off Leclerc. By Miami he had it down to 0.12 seconds.
The trend line is right. The absolute position is still "Leclerc edges it on raw pace, but only barely".
Race finishes have been mixed
Source: FIA results
Four races, four finishes: P8 (Australia), P3 (China — podium), P6 (Japan), P7 (Miami). The China result is the outlier. Strip it out, and the average is P7 — fine, not great. Include it, and the average is P6, with a podium banked.
The Miami result is symptomatic of where Ferrari are in 2026: a car that can qualify in the mix and a car that drops back in the race when its rear tyres start going off. Hamilton spent the second half of the Miami GP defending from Antonelli a lap down rather than attacking the cars ahead.
Year-on-year, the numbers are not bad
| Spec | Points | Position | Team |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 10 | P10 | Mercedes |
| 2025 | 42 | P5 | Ferrari |
| 2026 | 51 | P4 (joint with Norris) | Ferrari |
Put alongside his last three season-openers, the 2026 start is actually his best opening four rounds since the Mercedes glory years. The reason it does not feel that way is the gap to first: in 2024 the first-placed driver had 77 points; in 2026 the first-placed driver has 100. Hamilton's absolute number is up. The car ahead is just further ahead.
What is actually happening at Ferrari
Three things, all observable in the lap-time data:
- Tyre management has been a Ferrari weakness in 2026. The SF-26 eats its rears faster than the Mercedes W17 and the McLaren MCL40 in long stints. This shows up in race pace deltas of 0.3-0.5 s/lap in the final stint of every race so far.
- Hamilton has been more competitive in qualifying than races. Average qualifying position 5.5, average race finish 6.0 (skewed up by China). The car is slipping backwards under race conditions and Hamilton — who built his career on tyre management — has been struggling to make it work for the SF-26.
- The driver swap effect is still being felt. Hamilton's first year at Ferrari (2025) was disrupted; year two was supposed to be "the real start". The China podium says he has the speed; the surrounding results say the team and car are still being tuned to him.
What to watch in the next four races
The European triple-header — Imola (round 5), Monaco (round 6), Spain (round 7) — is where Hamilton's history says he steps up. Eight Monaco wins. Six Spanish GP wins. Three Imola wins. If he is going to make a championship play it will start in those three weekends.
The deeper question is whether the SF-26 can be made to behave under race conditions. Ferrari brought a floor update to Miami that did not move the needle — both Hamilton and Leclerc reported the car was "no better, no worse". The next package is rumoured for Imola. If that one fails to shift race pace, Hamilton's 2026 turns into a damage-limitation year.
The verdict from the data
Lewis Hamilton in May 2026 is exactly where the numbers say he should be: joint fourth in a Ferrari that is the third-fastest car, with a Ferrari podium already in the bag, a qualifying gap to his teammate that is closing race by race, and a race-pace deficit to Mercedes and McLaren that has nothing to do with him.
The story is not that he has lost it. The story is that the car has not given him many chances to show it — but when it has (China), he has taken them.
If Imola delivers a working upgrade, the second half of 2026 could look very different. If it does not, this season ends as the third consecutive year Hamilton is on the wrong end of a generation shift in F1. Either way the qualifying-gap trend and the China-podium tell us he is still capable when the car cooperates. That is the bit Hamilton controls.