Ferrari drivers Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc shared their thoughts on the upgrades expected across the grid as the 2026 F1 campaign resumes at the Miami GP.
Development war ramps up at Miami GP
Ferrari have so far this season established themselves as the second force behind Mercedes. However, a strong showing from McLaren’s Oscar Piastri at the Japanese GP showed that the pecking order may shift as the season progresses.
Given the month-long mid-season pause, teams had sufficient time to analyse their performances across the first three rounds. Speaking during media day, Lewis Hamilton admitted that there are many unknowns heading in the second sprint weekend of the 2026 season as many of Ferrari’s competitors will be debuting upgrades at the Miami GP.
Asked whether Ferrari can close the gap to Mercedes through development, Hamilton told the media: “It really depends. It depends who’s got upgrades and who doesn’t. You’ll have to assume that everyone probably does.
“Everyone’s taking one step forward, two steps, three, who knows, we’ll see this weekend. We do have a deficit on the power side and that won’t change. So, ultimately we need to be doing double the effort to close, to be in front.
“If they bring one tenth, we bring two and so on. The team have done an amazing job over this break to improve the car. It’s not going to be just here. We have to build that over the…probably the first half of the season at least to be able to try and close the gap.”
Miami GP will establish a “new direction of development”
Hamilton’s Ferrari teammate, Charles Leclerc, was also asked to weigh in on the ongoing development race.
“It’s going to be pretty unusual to see so many upgrades on so many different teams [this early] into a season,” he said. “For the new regulations, also for the way the season has been with the five-week break.”
Leclerc admitted he doesn’t expect the pecking order to change significantly over the course of the Miami weekend alone, adding that Ferrari’s main target will be keeping McLaren at bay.
“I’m pretty sure most of the people will have new cars for here,” he continued. “Whether it will change significantly the pecking order that we have seen since the beginning of the year, I doubt so. We might see less or more gaps between some teams, but I don’t know.
“At least for us, there’s McLaren that was very close in the last weekend. So I think the package will make a difference on that, hopefully for us better. But at the point of going and getting Mercedes, I think they were too ahead for us to get them only with what we are bringing here.”
The Ferrari driver stated that Miami will likely help teams establish a direction of development.
“But it’s going to be very interesting,” Leclerc said. “I think it’s going to dictate a lot of what’s going on after that. Because there will be new direction of development and new things that we might want to explore after the weekend and after having analysed what the other team will bring.”
