F1 champion says Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton could 'embarrass' everyone with new upgrades

Ferrari

F1 champion says Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton could 'embarrass' everyone with new upgrades

Lando Norris is impressed with Ferrari's form

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Saturday 20 June 2026 18:54

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2025 F1 world champion Lando Norris has revealed the one thing that would allow Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari to dominate the rest of the field, and it could already be on its way.

Ferrari have got themselves into the hunt for a first championship of any kind since 2008, despite Mercedes having dominated large parts of the 2026 season so far.

The Maranello-based outfit have been much closer to their rivals recently, and Hamilton even managed a first grand prix victory in Ferrari red last time out in Barcelona.

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With Mercedes' championship leader Kimi Antonelli retiring from the race with a mechanical issue, it means that Hamilton is now just 41 points off the top of the championship, and seemingly in a title battle.

Before his win in Barcelona, Hamilton claimed two second-place finishes in Canada and Monaco back-to-back, moving him up into second in the drivers' championship for the first time since the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

And now, McLaren's Norris has suggested that with some upgrades to their power unit, Ferrari could 'embarrass' everybody, seemingly having a very strong chassis design.

Ferrari an upgrade away from dominating?

“We're lucky that Ferrari don't have a better engine at the minute,” McLaren’s Norris told Sky Sports in the media pen after the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix. “If they had a better engine, they're dominating.

“They're the class of the field in terms of cornering performance at the minute and we're not even close to them. It's the realistic point of it, we're a long, long way from where we need to be.

“If they make improvements on the engine side, then they'll embarrass everyone. We need to really get our heads down and see what improvements we can do. But the team are working hard. It's not that we're not doing that, we're working very hard.

“Everyone back in the factory is doing the best they can. Some things take time, but we need to really accelerate the progress at the minute because we want to stay in the fight.”

In bad news for McLaren and Mercedes but fantastic news for Ferrari, that upgrade could already be on the way.

Ferrari have been offered two homologation windows by the FIA via the Additional Development and Upgrades Opportunities (ADUO) programme, which attempts to help struggling power unit manufacturers.

It's because they are between two and four per cent behind the best power unit on the grid, which has been determined to be Red Bull-Ford's power unit.

Rather controversially, however, this also means that Mercedes will get one homologation, allowing them to bring an upgrade to the power unit that has claimed all but one race win so far this season.