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Welcome back to Prime Tire, where today I’m still in awe of the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the memory of walking into the Circuit de la Sarthe on Sunday morning, hearing a race I watched start some 14 hours ago previously still running.
As I was finishing my report on Toyota’s sixth victory of the famous French endurance race, I saw Lewis Hamilton defeated the mighty 2026 Mercedes squad to become the first-non Mercedes Formula 1 winner this year and secure his first victory in Ferrari red.
In an F1 season that was begging for more storylines beyond the baffling engines and George Russell’s many misfortunes (more on this to come), that result was welcomed.
I’m Alex, and Madeline Coleman will be along later.
(By the way, due to the U.S. holiday, we’ll have no PT this Friday. We’ll be back in your inboxes next Tuesday!)
Barcelona-Catalunya GP: Hamilton highs and Russell lows
I really feel for Russell so far in 2026. Sure, he’s been a surprising step slower than F1 leader Kimi Antonelli many times, but he really should be closer to his F1-leading teammate in the drivers’ standings. Russell has 106 points to Antonelli’s 156.
The Barcelona-Catalunya GP was Russell’s first bit of good fortune in quite a while in that it was Antonelli who suffered a Mercedes engine issue for a change. But before that happened, Hamilton gained significant distance with a final pit stop under the virtual safety car activation.
I don’t know who Russell cursed on his way from winning in Melbourne to his first 2026 reliability drama the following week in China, but they sure have subsequently wreaked their vengeance.
The other way of looking at this is that not only had Antonelli passed Russell for second place before his late failure last Sunday, but Hamilton’s upgraded Ferrari was seriously fast in Spain, as Madeline explained here.
Short of mirroring his aggressive three-stop strategy — and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff also hinted that not issuing team orders at the race’s halfway stage cost both silver cars time too, given their battle — there seemed to be little Russell could’ve done to stop Hamilton, his former teammate, from winning.
The standings gap between Hamilton (115 points) and Russell has now increased to nine points. Hamilton also now trails Antonelli by 41, having arrived in Spain 66 points adrift.
Quite frankly, both Mercedes drivers should be worried by Hamilton’s recent gains.
Mercedes clearly has a severe reliability problem, as good as its engine package is overall (although, apparently, not Red Bull good). These things take time to fix, and as quickly as Russell’s gap ballooned around reliability misery, so too could Antonelli’s lead be wiped out.
There are 15 races remaining, after all …
Speaking of the rest of the 2026 calendar, I spoke with the president of Qatar’s motorsport organization at Le Mans (the Qatar Motor and Motorcycle Federation joined forces with the Italian Iron Lynx team to field a Mercedes car in the GT3 class) about the possibility of dates moving late in the campaign to squeeze the canceled Bahrain and Saudi Arabian races back in.
The full story will be coming to The Athletic later this week, but suffice it to say, a change of date for the Qatar GP on Nov. 29 seems unlikely.
By the time that event takes place, presumably still as the penultimate round, will Hamilton be vying with the Mercedes boys for his shot at a record-breaking eighth world title, while they each try to secure their first?
It looks more likely than it did just a few weeks ago, when Ferrari was well adrift of Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull in Miami after the unplanned F1 spring break.
Ferrari brought a considerable upgrade package of new front wing, floor, sidepod and diffuser parts to Barcelona, and Hamilton seems right at home with the SF-26. At the same time, his teammate Charles Leclerc appears regularly at sea.
I do expect Mercedes’ advantage to return, given the intense heat in Spain last weekend played to Hamilton’s tire-management strengths. The upcoming tracks in Austria, the United Kingdom and Belgium all require good engine power, and Ferrari is still lacking there compared to Mercedes.
But having Hamilton back toward his best is a tantalizing prospect for this year’s title fight. And defeating the team that effectively spurned him as it looked to fast-track Antonelli into F1 would be quite the story to end the season.
Now, over to Madeline for insight into one of the most unusual race retirements of recent years, which happened halfway through the event in Spain.
Inside the Paddock with Madeline Coleman
Audi’s Nico Hülkenberg endured one of the most peculiar retirements from the Barcelona-Catalunya GP, which can only be described as incredibly unlucky.
He achieved his best starting position of the season after qualifying ninth, and was in the fight for points before his race took a sharp turn on Lap 29 of 66.
Here, Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson ran wide at Turn 12 and kicked up some gravel. One stone hit the following Hülkenberg’s Energy Recovery System kill switch — marked on the side of the car with a large “E.”
This is a safety mechanism that shuts F1 cars down quickly. The switch allows marshals to turn off a car’s engine in emergency situations trackside.
“Very sudden death,” Hülkenberg said of the end to his race. He’d coasted back to pit lane, but his race was already over.
“Are you serious?” Lawson said when he learned about why Hülkenberg retired. “That’s so unfortunate. Obviously I had no idea, and if I could perfectly aim for something like that …”
It came on a weekend when Audi looked competitive, and the incident cost it a big chance to score valuable points in the congested midfield.
Hülkenberg is also yet to score points this year, while his teammate Gabriel Bortoleto has scored two, thanks to his ninth-place finish back in Australia.
Back to you, Alex.
Inside the Paddock with Me, Alex!
Visiting the Le Mans 24 Hours had long been on my motorsport event bucket list.
And after watching Toyota triumph last weekend in the crown jewel event of the World Endurance Championship, I’m just an Indianapolis 500 away from matching Luke Smith in completing the motorsport journalist Triple Crown (also including attending the Monaco GP).
If I’m ever lucky enough to go one day, I can only hope that race will end as thrillingly close as it did when Felix Rosenqvist won for Meyer Shank Racing last month.
But three Hypercars being separated by just 20 seconds at the end of a whole day of racing was pretty special, too.
I wondered what Toyota was up to in pitting earlier than any other Hypercar squad shortly after the start back on Saturday afternoon. It turned out, it was unleashing its pace in clean air to undercut ahead of its rivals and then turn the screw with excellent tire management in similarly hot conditions to Barcelona.
Plenty happened from there, and I do feel sorry for the No. 38 Cadillac car, which was flying in the night in the hands of the affable Jack Aitken before a power-steering problem dropped it out of the lead fight. Aitken had already lost Le Mans pole to a contentious stewards’ ruling.
Then when you consider the closeness of the racing at the front, with the new aerodynamic packages on the Toyota, BMW and Cadillac cars combining (presumably) with the secret Balance of Performance ruling to keep the Hypercar field more together than it was as Ferrari strolled to another victory in 2025, there were many stories to follow.
And that’s before getting into the LMP2 and GT3 classes, where the winners included an impressive second successive victory for the Inter Europol Competition team in the former and TF Sport’s Ben Keating triumphing with his teammates aboard a Corvette Z06 GT3.R car in the latter less than a week after being cleared to race following elbow surgery.
But it’s hard to deny the winning No. 7 Toyota crew their flowers.
After all, Kamui Kobayashi (also the Toyota team principal) and Mike Conway so often had to watch their teammates in the No. 8 claim the biggest prize in sports car racing between 2018 and 2022, when Toyota won five in a row. Their teammate Nyck de Vries finally has a glorious result to truly banish the memories of his awkward, short AlphaTauri F1 stint in 2023, too.
“I’m so thankful that Le Mans chose us this year,” de Vries said shortly before taking to the giant Le Mans podium.
I’d urge anyone considering attending a motorsport event to add Le Mans to their own bucket list of races. There’s so much to see.
From the 60-plus-car field to many fan zones, bars, restaurants, shops, miles of camp sites, viewing spots, the drivers parade in the city — even complimentary hair salons.
As I wrote ahead of the race, this is a super-sized event, and one well worth sampling at least once.
If you do attend, just listen better to the regular announcements about hot weather played over the circuit’s PA system if you want to avoid the sunburn I carried back home …
Anyway, au revoir, Le Mans, et merci!
Outside the Points
🗣 I listened to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem say many things about F1 and not the WEC at Le Mans on Saturday, one of which became this story about his expectation that a 12th (and new) F1 team would be from China.
❗ From that same story, Ben Sulayem also insisted the decision on F1 returning to using V8 engines “is made.”
🤝 Kim Kardashian gallantly returned Antonelli’s Monaco GP post-race cooldown towel. Yes, you read those words correctly.
‼️ McLaren announced it will appeal the appeal of Pierre Gasly’s Monaco GP penalties being rescinded. Obviously.
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