Lewis Hamilton has just been handed keys to 8th F1 title

Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton has just been handed keys to 8th F1 title

Many teams have brought upgrades to the Miami Grand Prix weekend

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Saturday 2 May 2026 16:57

The excuses have to stop. Ferrari have given seven-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton a vastly improved machine for the 2026 Miami Grand Prix. Now, can he make it work and mount a challenge for an eighth title?

Following a 2025 season in which the Brit finished 86 points behind team-mate Charles Leclerc and failed to claim a single grand prix podium, Hamilton has made a more promising start to the 2026 season.

He's already banished his Ferrari grand prix podium hoodoo, and has been much closer to Leclerc in races so far this year.

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The SF-26 is a much more competitive machine than its predecessor but with one caveat. It is still nowhere near fast enough to challenge Mercedes for a world championship.

That may be about to change as F1 heads to the Miami International Autodrome after a five-week break, with Ferrari making changes to their chassis design in an attempt to catch up to Mercedes.

But can Hamilton take advantage and begin to claim race victories before ultimately challenging for a record-breaking eighth world championship?

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What changes have Ferrari made for the Miami GP?

A whopping 11 changes have been detailed on an FIA document ahead of the Miami GP, which shows the declared upgrades that each team have brought to the circuit.

Ferrari have tweaked the front wing endplate and the front corner of their car, aiming for more flow feature stability. The front suspension has also been tweaked, designed to bring load gains and better management of downstream impacts.

The floor is where a lot of the work has been done. The floor body, floor edge and diffuser have all been altered to focus on load increase across what Ferrari describe as the 'full operating window. Rear suspension tweaks provide a 'favourable pressure gradient' for the diffuser.

Big changes have been made to the rear of Hamilton and Leclerc's cars. The 'macarena' rear wing design has been implemented, a folding rear wing which is designed to maximise aerodynamic drag when the car is in active aero mode. This means that they have reprofiled the mainplane and flap, added a central bracket flap and reworked the pylon/mainplane junction.

To make the macarena design work, the rear wing endplates have also had to be tweaked, focusing more on flow conditioning.

Can Lewis Hamilton make the SF-26 sing to his tune?

Hamilton has to be closer to Leclerc in terms of performance in 2026, and his future with the team might depend on it.

The 41-year-old is set to be out of contract at the end of this year, and Ferrari will not hesitate to replace him if they believe they can get a similar amount of performance from a younger, much cheaper driver (Oliver Bearman anyone?).

If these changes have turned the SF-26 into a car capable of challenging for race wins, then Hamilton has to start picking up some grand prix victories, no excuses.

It's been thought that his poor performance over the last few years - he has been outperformed by team-mates in three of the last four years - is partly down to the fact that he's been fighting for top-five finishes in his various cars, rather than wins.

If that really is the case, then now is the time to show that he still has what it takes to battle with the likes of Leclerc, George Russell and Lando Norris.

Ahead of the Miami GP weekend, however, Hamilton tried to draw some of the attention away from himself and Ferrari, playing down the extent of their upgrades.

"I think there is a gap between us power wise compared to Mercedes," he told media in Miami. "To close that gap that means we have to do double the development each time of others, which is a really tall order.

"You have to assume everyone is developing at a similar sort of rate because of the new rules. So if a team brings a tenth, we need to bring two, if they bring two, we need to bring three or four.

"That's a lot and I think we do just have to keep pushing to close the gap on the engine side."

Written by

Sam Cook - Digital Journalist

Sam Cook is a talented young sports journalist and social media professional who now specialises in Formula 1, having previously worked as a football journalist and a local news reporter for a variety of different brands.

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F1 Lewis Hamilton Ferrari Charles Leclerc Miami Grand Prix