Lewis Hamilton and Scuderia Ferrari Leave Miami With P6, P8
Lewis Hamilton left scuderia ferrari's Miami weekend with damage, a P7 sprint finish and a grand prix that ended with the team nowhere near the step forward it wanted. Ferrari had brought 11 upgrades to Miami after a five-week enforced break from the 2026 campaign, but the package did not produce the jump the team needed.
Hamilton trails Leclerc in Miami
Hamilton finished P7 in the Miami sprint while Charles Leclerc joined Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in the top three. In the main race, Hamilton picked up damage from a lap one collision with Franco Colapinto at Turn 11, and that added another layer to a weekend already short on pace.
The gap inside the garage was hard to miss. Karun Chandhok said Hamilton was just behind Charles by a couple of tenths, two or three tenths all weekend, and that Ferrari should think about whether there is further performance to be optimised or unlocked from the update.
Ferrari's upgrade package under scrutiny
Ferrari's Miami trip was supposed to show that the early-season package had moved the team on. Instead, Chandhok said the weekend was overall a bit disappointing and warned that Ferrari's big early-season upgrade would not worry McLaren if that was the best Ferrari had.
He also said Ferrari were ahead of Red Bull and McLaren and felt they had slipped behind. That view matched the timing of the weekend: McLaren and Red Bull appeared to have improved after the five-week enforced break, while Ferrari arrived with 11 upgrades and left without the statement result it needed.
Canada brings the next test
David Croft put the Miami result in plain terms, saying Ferrari came home with a sixth and an eighth from an upgrade weekend, and called it massive disappoint. The comparison with what comes next is blunt: Mercedes plans to bring its upgrade to Canada, and McLaren is believed to be bringing more upgrades there too.
Hamilton had ended his podium drought at the Chinese Grand Prix in March 2026, but Miami was a reminder that Ferrari's improvements still need to show up over a full weekend. For now, the numbers from Miami say the same thing twice: the upgrade was large, and the gain was not.
