{"id":741562,"date":"2026-06-16T23:46:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T23:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/741562\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T23:46:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T23:46:15","slug":"finally-a-non-mercedes-winner-plus-a-love-letter-to-le-mans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/741562\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally, a non-Mercedes winner! Plus: A love letter to Le Mans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic\u2019s F1 newsletter. Sign up here<\/a> to receive Prime Tire directly in your inbox twice a week during the season and weekly in the offseason.<\/p>\n

Welcome back to Prime Tire, where today I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

As I was finishing my report on\u00a0Toyota\u2019s sixth victory<\/a>\u00a0of 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\u00a0first victory in Ferrari<\/a>\u00a0red.<\/p>\n

In an F1 season that was begging for more storylines beyond the baffling engines and George Russell\u2019s many misfortunes (more on this to come), that result was welcomed.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Alex, and Madeline Coleman will be along later.<\/p>\n

(By the way, due to the U.S. holiday, we\u2019ll have no PT this Friday. We\u2019ll be back in your inboxes next Tuesday!)<\/p>\n

Barcelona-Catalunya GP: Hamilton highs and Russell lows<\/p>\n

I really feel for Russell so far in 2026. Sure, he\u2019s 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\u2019 standings. Russell has 106 points to Antonelli\u2019s 156.<\/p>\n

The Barcelona-Catalunya GP was Russell\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t 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\u00a0wreaked their vengeance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Hamilton\u2019s upgraded Ferrari was seriously fast in Spain,\u00a0as Madeline explained\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Short of mirroring his aggressive three-stop strategy \u2014 and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff also hinted that\u00a0not issuing team orders<\/a>\u00a0at the race\u2019s halfway stage cost both silver cars time too, given their battle \u2014 there seemed to be little Russell could\u2019ve done to stop Hamilton, his former teammate, from winning.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Quite frankly, both Mercedes drivers should be worried by Hamilton\u2019s recent gains.<\/p>\n

Mercedes clearly has a severe reliability problem, as good as its engine package is overall (although, apparently,\u00a0not Red Bull good<\/a>). These things take time to fix, and as quickly as Russell\u2019s gap ballooned around reliability misery, so too could Antonelli\u2019s lead be wiped out.<\/p>\n

There are 15 races remaining, after all \u2026<\/p>\n

Speaking of the rest of the 2026 calendar, I spoke with the president of Qatar\u2019s 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\u00a0canceled Bahrain and Saudi Arabian<\/a>\u00a0races back in.<\/p>\n

The full story will be coming to\u00a0The Athletic\u00a0later this week, but suffice it to say,\u00a0a change of date for the Qatar GP on Nov. 29 seems unlikely.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

It looks more likely than it did just a few weeks ago, when\u00a0Ferrari was well adrift<\/a>\u00a0of Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull in Miami after the unplanned\u00a0F1 spring break<\/a>.
\nFerrari 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\u00a0regularly at sea<\/a>.
\nI do expect Mercedes\u2019 advantage to return, given the intense heat in Spain last weekend played to Hamilton\u2019s tire-management strengths. The upcoming tracks in Austria, the United Kingdom and Belgium all require good engine power, and Ferrari is still lacking there\u00a0compared to Mercedes.<\/a><\/p>\n

But having Hamilton back toward his best is a tantalizing prospect for this year\u2019s title fight.\u00a0And\u00a0defeating the team<\/a>\u00a0that effectively spurned him as it looked to fast-track Antonelli into F1 would be quite the story to end the season.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Inside the Paddock with Madeline Coleman<\/p>\n

Audi\u2019s Nico H\u00fclkenberg endured one of the most peculiar retirements from the Barcelona-Catalunya GP, which can only be described as incredibly unlucky.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Here, Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson ran wide at Turn 12 and kicked up some gravel. One stone hit the following H\u00fclkenberg\u2019s Energy Recovery System kill switch \u2014 marked on the side of the car with a large \u201cE.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a safety mechanism that shuts F1 cars down quickly. The switch allows marshals to turn off a car\u2019s engine in emergency situations trackside.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery sudden death,\u201d H\u00fclkenberg said of the end to his race. He\u2019d coasted back to pit lane, but his race was already over.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you serious?\u201d Lawson said when he learned about why H\u00fclkenberg retired. \u201cThat\u2019s so unfortunate. Obviously I had no idea, and if I could perfectly aim for something like that \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

H\u00fclkenberg 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.<\/p>\n

Back to you, Alex.<\/p>\n

Inside the Paddock with Me, Alex!<\/p>\n

Visiting the Le Mans 24 Hours had long been on my motorsport event bucket list.<\/p>\n

And after watching\u00a0Toyota triumph<\/a>\u00a0last weekend in the crown jewel event of the World Endurance Championship, I\u2019m just an Indianapolis 500 away from matching Luke Smith in completing the motorsport journalist\u00a0Triple Crown<\/a>\u00a0(also including attending the Monaco GP).<\/p>\n

If I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

But three Hypercars being separated by just 20 seconds at the end of a whole day of racing was\u00a0pretty special, too<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0contentious stewards\u2019 ruling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0another victory in 2025<\/a>, there were many stories to follow.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u00a0following elbow surgery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s hard to deny the winning No. 7 Toyota crew their flowers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u00a0awkward, short AlphaTauri F1 stint<\/a>\u00a0in 2023, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so thankful that Le Mans chose us this year,\u201d de Vries said shortly before taking to the giant Le Mans podium.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d urge anyone considering attending a motorsport event to add Le Mans to their own bucket list of races.\u00a0There\u2019s so much to see.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 even complimentary hair salons.<\/p>\n

As I wrote\u00a0ahead of the race<\/a>, this is a super-sized event, and one well worth sampling at least once.<\/p>\n

If you do attend, just listen better to the regular announcements about hot weather played over the circuit\u2019s PA system if you want to avoid the sunburn I carried back home \u2026<\/p>\n

Anyway, au revoir, Le Mans, et merci!<\/p>\n

Outside the Points<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udde3 I listened to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem say\u00a0many\u00a0things 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\u00a0would be from China<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2757 From that same story, Ben Sulayem also insisted the decision on F1 returning to using V8 engines \u201cis made<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\ud83e\udd1d Kim Kardashian\u00a0gallantly returned<\/a> Antonelli\u2019s Monaco GP post-race cooldown towel. Yes, you read those words correctly.<\/p>\n

\u203c\ufe0f McLaren announced it will\u00a0appeal the appeal<\/a>\u00a0of Pierre Gasly\u2019s Monaco GP penalties\u00a0being rescinded<\/a>. Obviously.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udceb Love Prime Tire? Check out The Athletic\u2019s other newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic\u2019s F1 newsletter. Sign up here to receive Prime Tire directly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-741562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}