Lewis Hamilton: Can Ferrari win again at Austrian GP to accelerate Mercedes challenge as Scuderia ready first engine upgrade

No driver has won more grands prix in Formula 1 than Lewis Hamilton, while no team has won more often than Ferrari, but the combination’s long-awaited first success together at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix acted as a historic moment in the sport.

But was it a statement of things now to come over the rest of the 2026 season or the result of a particularly strong weekend and the first step towards being able to challenge championship leaders Mercedes on a race-by-race basis?

We assess Ferrari’s chances of building on their overdue return to winning ways as the season heads to the hills of Austria…

Is this the start of something for Ferrari?

After ending what had become a 34-race run without a Grand Prix victory, the Prancing Horse will certainly arrive at the Red Bull Ring this week with their tails up.

The same is surely true of Hamilton, whose personal victory drought back to 2024 had lasted six races longer than Ferrari’s. The 41-year-old has now finished in the top two of the last three races, with four podiums in seven races this season.

Prominent figures from championship leaders Mercedes and reigning champions McLaren were readily talking up Ferrari’s form and potential in interviews after the Barcelona race, with the Silver Arrows’ Toto Wolff confident that “there is a third party now getting involved in the championship fight, constructor and driver” with his team.

The Scuderia’s team boss and race-winning driver, though, were staying with feet firmly planted the on floor.

After all, Mercedes had won all six races before Spain and remain unbeaten for Grand Prix pole positions this season.

They also hold still-comfortable leads of 72 points in the Constructors’ Championship and, with Kimi Antonelli, 41 points in the Drivers’ Championship despite the Italian’s late Barcelona retirement when running second to Hamilton.

“Two weeks ago everything was a disaster and now we are speaking about world championship,” said Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur.

“The approach is to go to Austria exactly with the same approach that we had in Barcelona, and not to think about the championship or to project yourself with 25 more wins. I will never do it.”

Hamilton said “nothing is impossible” in terms of challenging for a record eighth world title this year but said Ferrari must first focus “one step at a time” in order to ensure they keep making improvements.

What was clear from Spain is that they made a strong initial step towards Mercedes courtesy of the upgrades they brought to the SF-26.

Eight separate aerodynamic changes to the car there comfortably represented the biggest upgrade package in the field, with revisions to the front, rear and floor of the car all helping to increase aerodynamic load on a circuit where downforce and cornering are king.

But it coincided with a weekend in which Mercedes introduced minimal changes to their W17 as the leading teams deploy different upgrade schedules in the early months of F1’s new regulation era when sizeable performance gains remain still possible.

“We are going in the right direction. It was a really good weekend in Canada and Monaco. In Spain, the pace was good from the beginning,” added Vasseur. “It was a good step forward, but I think what is important is that this season the championship will be based on the capacity of the team to develop, not on the picture of Barcelona.

“Usually for the last 25 years we used to say that a good car in Barcelona will dominate the season, but I think this season will be much more based on the capacity of all the teams to bring performance to the car.”

Ferrari poised to unleash first ADUO engine upgrade in Austria?

It is set to be track owners Red Bull’s turn among the leading teams to bring the biggest aerodynamic upgrade of the weekend to Austria, but Ferrari are still thought to have more changes of their own lined up – this time in regards to their engine.

F1’s manufacturers were informed by the FIA on race-day morning in Monaco last month where they ranked at the end of the first assessment window for engine upgrades – known as Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO).

With Red Bull deemed to have the ‘benchmark’ engine, Ferrari were found to be in the group with a deficit of four per cent or more to the best, meaning they qualified for two upgrades this season along with Audi and Aston Martin.

Red Bull have since queried their placing at the head of that ranking with the governing body, although there has been no ‘pause’ to the ADUO system while those conversations take place.

That means the four manufacturers already granted upgrade opportunities have been free to introduce changes ever since Barcelona. Having anticipated that they would be awarded an ADUO, it is understood that Ferrari have an upgraded engine and new fuel ready for Austria.

The changes are not thought to be huge, perhaps worth less than 10 additional horsepower in total, with the team readying a bigger upgrade for later in the season when they will deploy their second ADUO.

It is not yet clear when Mercedes, who have one upgrade opportunity this year after being judged to be between two and four per cent behind Red Bull’s international combustion engine, will introduce theirs.

Still, given much of the short 2.69-mile Red Bull Ring layout is connected by three straights and the track in the Styrian hills is at altitude, which means the engine and turbocharger have to work harder than normal, any step forward in output is likely to help Ferrari’s cause this weekend as they go for consecutive wins.

Hamilton has spoken in recent weeks about how fully closing down Ferrari’s full engine deficit to Mercedes will take them months, but is hopeful they can outperform his former team with chassis development gains.

“We know we have this power deficit,” said Hamilton after his Barcelona win.

“There’s going to be tracks where we go to with long, long straights where that makes it even harder. But we’ve got a great car at the core and if we keep adding performance and we can go through the corners quicker, maybe we can narrow that deficit down a little bit until we improve or until we close the gap on power.

“Very, very hard to think long-term at the moment. I think it’s just about taking it one race at a time, one week at a time.”

‘Hamilton knows what it takes to win’

Sky Sports F1’s Jacques Villeneuve speaking on The F1 Show podcast:

“Lewis knows how to win and he knows what it takes. And if he gets a sniff of it, there won’t be any quarters.

“I think that’s where he can make the difference.

“Mercedes right now is not in a position to be even able or allowed to choose a driver over another.

“Ferrari is because Ferrari has to focus on Lewis if they want a small chance of winning, so the decision is easy to make because Leclerc is quite far back [in the championship].”

Will Leclerc respond to Hamilton’s resurgence?

The other subplot to Ferrari’s weekend in Austria is whether Leclerc will respond to team-mate Hamilton’s rich vein of form after a difficult sequence of races for the Monegasque.

Leclerc dominated the seven-time champion on the Briton’s arrival at Maranello from Mercedes last year but a gap of 40 points has opened between them in the standings after he failed to score any points across the Monaco-Barcelona double-header.

Running behind Hamilton into the closing stages of his home race in Monaco, Leclerc crashed out of third place as the race was restarting from behind the Safety Car.

He had looked the quicker of the two Ferrari drivers through practice in Barcelona but then crashed in the final phase of qualifying, leaving him 10th on the grid. He was on course to salvage fifth in the race when a technical problem stopped his car with four laps to go.

Sky Sports F1’s Jacques Villeneuve believes Leclerc, who signed an extended Ferrari contract on the eve of the Monaco race weekend, is in a difficult moment but would be wise to pay close attention to what Hamilton is doing.

“It’s tough,” the 1997 world champion told The F1 Show.

“[Leclerc] was just giving a lifetime contract, so how does that push you? How does that put you a little bit on the edge? How does that make you feel like, ‘OK, I need to deliver. I need to keep on going to make sure that I stay good in my trade’, so I’m not sure that’s a positive.

“Ultimately, we started seeing the cracks because he could see what Lewis was doing and it stressed him and he tried to do it differently instead of just accepting that maybe that weekend he was just that little bit off.

“It’s a long season and there’s nothing wrong learning from the record holder, from Lewis Hamilton. You have Lewis Hamilton as a team-mate, learn from him.”

The Red Bull Ring is perhaps one of the best places for Leclerc to set about regaining his form given the 28-year-old is something of a Spielberg specialist having claimed one win, three second places and one third place at the circuit since his first season at Ferrari in 2019.

Irrespective of whether or not Ferrari have the pace to fight Mercedes for back-to-back wins, Leclerc certainly needs a big, error-free weekend to get his own season back on track.

Formula 1’s European season continues with the Austrian Grand Prix this weekend, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime

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