Lewis Hamilton’s breakthrough Ferrari win was the Briton’s long-awaited response to the critics who claimed his Maranello move was folly and that the seven-time champion was over the hill.

But coming just seven rounds into the 2026 season, it’s set off a long list of other questions.

Despite it now being mid-June, this backloaded championship is still young, and a true form guide seems to be more and more evasive with every passing race.

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What is certain, though, is that Hamilton’s victory — Ferrari’s victory — has changed the complexion of the campaign. This isn’t the season we thought we had only a few days ago.

But how much have things changed — and how much could they keep changing?

COULD HAMILTON AND FERRARI HAVE WON WITHOUT THE VSC?

Hamilton’s doubters might be tempted to chalk his breakthrough win down the convenient timing of the virtual safety car, with Fernando Alonso’s stopped Aston Martin providing Hamilton with the cover needed to make his third pit stop without losing the lead.

But that wasn’t the winning move.

Ferrari had been the strategically sharper team throughout the race.

Hamiton starting on softs allowed him to pressure George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli into making a premature first stop, forcing the race onto his terms. When he made his second stop, he unleashed enough pace that ensured Russell couldn’t respond without losing track position.

It’s true Hamilton would have had to have given up the lead with his final stop without the VSC, but the maths strongly suggests that the Ferrari driver had a good shot at victory regardless.

He was 17 seconds ahead at the virtual safety car. Had he run to his original final stop, that gap probably would have been around 12.5 seconds, based on how quickly Russell was catching him after the Mercedes driver’s final service.

At 23 seconds for a pit stop, Hamilton would have rejoined 10.5 seconds behind Russell but with seven lap newer tyres.

Tyre degradation was worth at least 0.1 seconds per lap, which means he would have caught Russell with nine laps remaining.

Of course he would have had to have passed Lando Norris and Antonelli before challenging Russell, half a second a lap is usually enough to execute a pass in Spain, and he had that pace in hand.

At most you could say that we were denied a thrilling chase for the lead, but not that Mercedes was denied a victory.

“I think Lewis would have come through regardless,” Russell said. “Lewis had really great pace.”

‘It’s not over that’s for sure’ | 00:57

IS HAMILTON BACK TO HIS BEST?

Hamilton’s victory drought lasted an at-times debilitating 687 days, dating back to his last win with Mercedes at the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix.

He had to wait 530 days as a Ferrari driver — 31 grands prix — to stand on the top step of the podium in the famous red overalls.

Some would use these numbers as a stick to beat him with — where was he all that time, and doesn’t that mark out this victory as a flash in the pan?

That would be too superficial a reading, however.

Hamilton’s trend has clearly been positive, both in his recovery from last year’s nadir and in his building of momentum this season.

This win, for example, follows successive second-place finishes in Canada and Montreal, where he talked about finally finding his groove.

These results aren’t random or circumstantial. They’re the fruit of almost 18 months of Hamilton hard work to make himself comfortable at Ferrari.

It wasn’t a mistake that his new race engineer for this season, Carlo Santi, joined him on the podium to celebrate his victory. Santi is symbolic of Hamilton’s efforts to reshape his side of the garage to get the best out of himself and to influence the direction of the team in a way he knows can bring success.

Those efforts went all the way to changing his brake discs from 50-year Ferrari partner Brembo to his preferred Carbon Industrie, which he’d used for his entire career before last season.

It took time, but Ferrari acquiesced to his requests, and now team and driver are reaping the rewards

For these reasons Hamilton fans should be optimistic that seven-time champion Hamilton really is back in the game.

Whether he’s back at his absolute best is another question, but while time dulls even the sharpest talents, experience can often account for those lost tenths. Hamilton would perhaps argue that’s exactly what he’s demonstrating this year with his influence.

‘This one is something else’ | 01:29

HOW GOOD IS THE FERRARI CAR?

It’s no coincidence that Ferrari became the first non-Mercedes team to win a grand prix at the weekend it brought another major upgrade to its car.

The team listed eight new parts ahead of the weekend, which was more than any of its rivals. These lists shouldn’t be treated as definitive — there’s too much subterfuge for that — but they are indicative of the size of the package.

Team principal Frédéric Vasseur has been saying all season that this campaign would be defined by who could achieve the fastest rate of development, not by who started ahead. Of course any team starting behind the curve would say that, but he backed his Maranello factory to prove him right.

But getting ahead of Mercedes at one race is a different proposition to staying ahead over multiple grands prix.

“We need to see across the course of a couple of races,” Russell cautioned. “They did bring a big upgrade here. and I think the development slope is so steep at the moment for all of the teams [that] whoever is going to be bringing those upgrades earliest is going to be taking a step forward.

“We saw it with McLaren in Miami, having a really strong weekend, and then ourselves and Ferrari have taken a step forward thereafter.”

But Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is regarded as a dependable litmus test of car performance. Even if the baking-hot 52°C track temperature might have swung the race towards Ferrari’s prodigious tyre-saving downforce — a possible factor but not the whole story — a car that’s quick in Barcelona should be competitive at the majority of circuits.

Norris believed he’d seen enough to be worried about the way the season it going.

“We’re lucky that Ferrari doesn’t have a better engine,” he told Sky Sports. ”If they had a better engine, they’re dominating. They’re the class of the field in terms of cornering performance.

“If they make improvements on the engine side, then they’ll embarrass everyone.”

But Ferrari’s engine may not remain relatively weak for long.

Reports suggest the FIA is poised to grant Ferrari two in-season upgrades for 2026 and 2027 in light of how far down the curve internal combustion engine is. If these concessions are confirmed, that could give Maranello a crucial opportunity to reduce or perhaps even eliminate its final weakness — or, in Norris’s words, to embarrass everyone.

Hamilton overcome after iconic victory | 01:27

CAN HAMILTON CONTEND FOR HIS EIGHTH CHAMPIONSHIP?

Hamilton’s deficit shrunk to 41 points thanks to Antonelli’s late retirement. It’s not a small gap — it’s almost two clear race victories — but it’s hardly insurmountable.

Norris came back from 34 points down on Oscar Piastri with nine races remaining last season to win the championship. Verstappen was 104 points down at the same moment and also finished ahead of the Australian.

Hamilton has 15 grand prix to close the gap.

“I’d rather not fight with him for a title, because I know what he’s capable of,” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said. “If he smells blood, he goes.

“I’ve seen it many years where suddenly the Lewis Hamilton train started to go and then it’s very difficult to stop it.

“You can see he’s driving strong. The dynamics in the team look to be good between him and his race engineer.

“I saw him on the podium on the telly. That face shows me that he’s very happy.”

Speaking to Sky Sports, Hamilton wasn’t willing to rule out a championship that only two days earlier seemed practically impossible.

“Mercedes have got an amazing package, and they’re so strong,” he said. “It’s going to take absolutely everything from all of us in this team to overcome the deficit, to get to being ahead of them and doing this consistently.

“But nothing’s impossible.”

Hamilton’s move to Ferrari was motivated by many factors. Part of it was reinvention. Part of it was the fulfilment of a childhood dream. But part of it was rolling the dice on winning his lost eighth title.

The success of the move was always predicated on how he and the team would fare this year, under new regulations. It’s still early days, but the project suddenly looks like it’s going exactly to plan.

Hamilton claims maiden win at Ferrari! | 02:12

HOW WILL MERCEDES RESPOND TO THE PRESSURE?

Verstappen demonstrated last year the sort pressure a multiple world champion on the warpath can bring to bear on a team fielding drivers who have never been in a title battle, forcing mistakes out of McLaren that got him to within two points of what would have been his greatest championship triumph.

Until now, Mercedes had been focused on managing two competitive drivers a decade on from Hamilton’s rivalry with Nico Rosberg and, more recently, the effect of Antonelli’s success on the internal dynamic.

Now, however, there’s a new question.

“There is a third party now getting involved in the championship fight, constructor and driver,” Wolff said, per Racer. “In that respect we will discuss internally with the two drivers how we want to handle the situation where we risk holding each other up.”

The Mercedes boss was referring to the battle between Russell and Antonelli in their second stint that he thinks cost them a handful of seconds, leaving them vulnerable to Hamilton.

They were allowed to fight each other because those are the rules at Mercedes — but they’re the rules because Mercedes hasn’t had to do much fighting with other teams.

If it can no longer win races by default, it’ll have to start prioritising whichever driver is in the best position to do so from race to race.

In Barcelona that would have been Antonelli — and can you imagine the fallout from Russell, on what was supposed to be his recovery weekend, being ordered to give a place over to his teammate and the title leader?

That’s the sort of pressure McLaren buckled under late last year.

Mercedes has more time and a large points buffer to spend in making its decision, but it will have to be prepared to make the tough calls eventually.

Antonelli & Leclerc retire on same lap! | 00:56

WILL EITHER TEAM PICK A NUMBER ONE DRIVER?

It’s everyone’s favourite question: will the teams pick their number one drivers if the championship battle really does open up?

On the one hand, it’s important to note that talk of number one drivers is usually overstated. Teams don’t unilaterally pick one driver to back at the expense of the other just because of a points gap, because it would be counter-productive to do so. Usually teams don’t care who wins so long as its one of their drivers.

But on the other hand, you know it’s a question that will be rolling around idly in the back of the heads of managers and drivers, particularly if the mathematics begin to demand it.

As an example, imagine if Russell had been a better match for Antonelli this year and they had three grand prix wins apiece. Suddenly neither would have a meaningful buffer to Hamilton behind them. A Russell resurgence could now be seen as a hindrance to Antonelli rebuilding his points buffer ahead of Hamilton.

With Russell yet to show he’s anything more than only sometimes Antonelli’s equal in the last six rounds, there’d be some temptation to back the Italian’s title campaign if Hamilton keeps closing the gap, particularly with Russell still 50 points adrift.

Ferrari, likewise, must see some logic to turbocharging the score of the driver closest to the front. A 41-point gap is still significant, and Hamilton likely can’t afford to lose many points to Charles Leclerc if he wants to close it — and Leclerc is already a chunky 40 points adrift.

Yet it would be premature for Mercedes or Ferrari to suddenly throw its weight behind only one of its drivers.

We’re only seven rounds into the season — less than a third of the way through — and there’s still much uncertainty on how the year will pan out.

Russell on paper should have the capacity to fight his way back into the mix — and Antonelli’s sudden engine failure demonstrated how quickly things could swing back towards the Briton.

As for Leclerc, his surprisingly large 40-point deficit is thanks to two successive failures to score, in Monte Carlo and Barcelona, for which he shoulders limited blame, with brakes and power steering the respective culprits. He was leading Hamilton on the title table beforehand.

If the title battle is to come down to each team choosing its preferred candidate, that decision will still be several months away.

But it’s just one of several fascinating questions asked by Hamilton’s famous Ferrari first in Spain.