{"id":441698,"date":"2026-01-27T23:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/441698\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T23:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:38:12","slug":"lewis-hamilton-lauds-productive-start-to-ferrari-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/441698\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton lauds ‘productive’ start to Ferrari testing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lewis Hamilton<\/a> sounded positive about his first day of preseason testing for Ferrari, calling it an “intense but productive” start to the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

Ferrari made their debut at F1’s private Barcelona ‘Shakedown Week’ at the Circuit de Catalunya on Tuesday, where teams are limited to running on three of the five available days.<\/p>\n

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Charles Leclerc<\/a> and Hamilton alternated duties either side of the lunch break in a day marked by various spells of rain.<\/p>\n

Leclerc completed 64 laps before Hamilton added 57 in the afternoon, a healthy haul of 560 kilometres to kick off the preseason slate of tests for the Italian team.<\/p>\n

“It was an intense but productive first day, especially with the mixed weather conditions,” Hamilton said. “We managed to get good mileage on the car and gather a lot of useful information, which is important with such a big regulation change.<\/p>\n

“There were no major issues and that gives us a solid foundation to keep learning and building over the next days.”<\/p>\n

Hamilton had a disappointing debut season in 2025 and failed to win a grand prix, although he did claim sprint pole and victory in China early in the year.<\/p>\n

The seven-time world champion has seemed in much better spirits already since the team’s launch last week, which also featured some installation laps at the company’s Fiorano test track.<\/p>\n

Lewis Hamilton took the track in his Ferrari on the first day of preseason testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.\u00a0Callo Albanese\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Ferrari will be able to run at two of the remaining three days this week in Barcelona.<\/p>\n

Sources have told ESPN that the intermittent rain affected the run plan of both Ferrari and Red Bull, the only two teams to hit the track on Tuesday, a day marked by lots of shorter stints on track.<\/p>\n

Leclerc completed 12 of his laps on the medium dry tyre, otherwise every lap Ferrari completed was on either the intermediate or full wet.<\/p>\n

“Very challenging today, because it started raining at 10.30 a.m. — obviously Charles had a little bit of dry running then it’s been wet all afternoon,” Hamilton added to F1 ITV. “Figuring out how to get the tyres working was really productive. I think we got 120 laps or something like that.<\/p>\n

“Given it’s in the wet conditions and we had a red flag, I think that’s pretty solid, so I’m really proud of everyone back at the factory for getting the car to this point. We got a lot of information on the car today — we definitely need to keep it up, [there’s] lots and lots to do, but a good first day.”<\/p>\n

He added: “I mean, it could be so much worse.<\/p>\n

“It’s such a big regulation change, so to get through the day without too many major … there were no major issues, it’s just small little increments that we’re trying to improve on. I think it’s great. As I said, we just need to try and get some more days like this.”<\/p>\n

Ferrari will have been encouraged by their own mileage and that of customer team Haas, who completed over 150 laps on Monday with their new Ferrari engine.<\/p>\n

As well as new aerodynamic rules, 2026 features brand new engines, meaning mileage is a key metric in the early weeks of preseason in testing the limits of reliability.<\/p>\n

Ferrari had a winless 2025 season but is hoping to propel itself back into title contention this year.<\/p>\n

Leclerc also sounded positive about the start.<\/p>\n

Speaking to F1 TV after finishing his own stint, Leclerc said: “I’m very excited. I’m very excited to see what the others have in store and when we start pushing a little bit more, see where we are compared to the others.<\/p>\n

“I think this year is a big opportunity for every team to do something different and to maybe gain bigger advantage than what we’ve seen in the last few years. I hope we are the team that will manage to make the difference.<\/p>\n

“But wherever we start, we will push at the maximum to try and bring Ferrari back to the top. It’s been quite a few years, so I hope that this one is ours.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton sounded positive about his first day of preseason testing for Ferrari, calling it an “intense but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-441698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}