I'd be surprised if anyone brought any meaningful upgrades, if at all to Monaco given how likely it is you hit a wall. Add Norris and Stella along with Merc who think Ferrari are the favorites for pole in MonacoSoulPancake13 wrote: ↑25 May 2026, 17:03Hamilton clearly had something extra over Leclerc this weekend when it came to understanding the tyres. Canada has never been great for Charles in qualy, but he has never struggled in the race like this here before - said post race he could not get the tyres in the right window and we all know how Pirellis can be.
Monaco should be a race win barring any upgrades to the top 4 (I think Hadjar mentioned something?) and next comes Spain with a huge upgrade package according to Vassuer.
Watch out for RBR. They were pretty strong in the race today, and they are going to shed an extra 6kg of free lap time.
https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... n-analyse/Looking at the GPS data, you can clearly see that Ferrari is very competitive in the corners. You could see that here in Montreal too, in the first sector. It also comes down to handling the kerbs well. Ferrari mainly loses time on the straights. But there aren't many of those in Monaco. That's why Lando is right to see Ferrari as the favourite for pole position in Monaco. At the current stage of development, the McLaren is better suited to slow corners than to medium- and high-speed corners. Ferrari and Mercedes are superior to us there. That should put us in a good position for Monaco
he kept thanking his engineer and mechanics so much? He claims they ignored the simulator and found something in previous data that give them direction on how to make the car work for his style. A key thing is that they didn't have data for this kind of car on this kind of track conditions... So it's not magical but there is something in it for sure. Have to judge it after like five more races.Badger wrote: ↑25 May 2026, 17:07Lewis was fast in quali, fast at the start, fast on restarts, and fast on the harder compound. All indications that he ran a set-up that got more temperature into the tyres. I wouldn't read too much into it in terms of "finding something" on the driver's side. That's magical thinking usually.
The idea that they found something that is generally applicable to all tracks and conditions is likely magical thinking. The idea that they found something that worked really well on a cold overcast weekend in Canada seems very plausible.PlatinumZealot wrote: ↑25 May 2026, 20:49he kept thanking his engineer and mechanics so much? He claims they ignored the simulator and found something in previous data that give them direction on how to make the car work for his style. A key thing is that they didn't have data for this kind of car on this kind of track conditions... So it's not magical but there is something in it for sure. Have to judge it after like five more races.Badger wrote: ↑25 May 2026, 17:07Lewis was fast in quali, fast at the start, fast on restarts, and fast on the harder compound. All indications that he ran a set-up that got more temperature into the tyres. I wouldn't read too much into it in terms of "finding something" on the driver's side. That's magical thinking usually.
"Hamilton is 2nd & Charles is 4th" not on the merit of the car. It's because one Mercedes and two Mclarens took themselves out. Realistically their positions are 5/6/7th with a Redbull in between or after them.
This is why I think that Leclerc in 4th is quite impressive from Ferrari, and a good showing at how good the car is.sucof wrote: ↑25 May 2026, 11:39This can be looked at from a completely different angle:
Leclerc was very bad at this track, or his car or his setup, we do not know. Hence Lewis could be ahead. Now Lewis and his fans are all saying he is back etc.
He will be "back" only if he can be ahead at many tracks while Leclerc does not have a bad weekend.
Lewis would be great at PR... Whenever he is ahead of Leclerc he claims he is backWhile probably nothing else happened than Leclerc slipped behind the same Lewis for a race.
If he means on exhausts pipe wing, I think he's wrong, a lot. That wing has its impact on the DF, but not "with a lot of..."
FDD wrote: ↑26 May 2026, 10:27If he means on exhausts pipe wing, I think he's wrong, a lot. That wing has its impact on the DF, but not "with a lot of..."
Only FER knows how much. Here we can only assume, according to some aero guys from the sport impact is not huge and pretty far from huge, rather small. Regardless, small impacts are also needed for WDC.
However SF26 de facto & de jure is very agile car, so Monaco is the chance for us, a big one, my opinion.
He literally said the car on track doesn't behave like it does on the simulator, though. This "driving feel" is different from numerical correlation. I'm not a race car driver but I can understand this.AR3-GP wrote: ↑25 May 2026, 21:31I think it's a lot of convenient coincidences. Hamilton doesn't like the simulator. Ferrari probably suggested more simulator work since he didn't feel on top of things. He happened to ditch the simulator ahead of tracks where he is always good (China, Canada).
Would need a larger sample size. Imo, the simulator (or not) is not decisive for his performances. Hamilton never said there was anything wrong with Ferrari's simulator. He said it was a very good one. He's just not a simulator guy and the way things line up, he got a get out of jail free card to never touch the simulator again. Remember that Hamilton wasn't using the simulator that much last year and that hardly guaranteed a good weekend.