George Russell claimed his first Formula One sprint race win at the 2026 Chinese Grand Prix, maintaining his perfect start to the season after a closely fought contest that highlighted both Mercedes’ strengths and the evolving competitive order under the 2026 regulations.
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Yeah. Lewis seemed poised for a good race. Leclerc looks to be in a good position to podium under normal cricumstances and even win if he gets a VSC, SC or Red flag
Leclerc will bring those tires until the final laps waiting for a SC/VSC. Whether he pits now or waits until the end, he's going to drop to P4 either way.
It's hard to judge much on this awful track. I never imagined it was possible to build something worse than Monaco, but they did. Congratulations to everyone involved.
Madrid: Ferrari’s strategy, Leclerc’s extraordinary tyre life and a missed VSC opportunity
Looking at the tyre histories and lap times after the race, I think Ferrari’s strategy with Charles Leclerc deserves a closer examination, because the problem was not necessarily the decision to start on the Hard. In fact, the race suggests that this was potentially a very strong alternative strategy.
Leclerc was the only front-runner to start on the Hard, while Antonelli and Norris started on the Medium and Verstappen on the Soft. What immediately stands out is just how competitive Ferrari remained on an extremely old Hard tyre.
Deep into the stint, Leclerc was still producing remarkably competitive lap times:
L41: LEC 1:37.661 – ANT 1:37.547 – VER 1:37.563 – NOR 1:37.208
L42: LEC 1:37.771 – ANT 1:37.296 – VER 1:37.377 – NOR 1:37.067
L43: LEC 1:37.510 – ANT 1:37.335 – VER 1:37.156 – NOR 1:37.149
L44: LEC 1:37.820 – ANT 1:37.167 – VER 1:37.077 – NOR 1:37.090
At that stage, Leclerc’s Hard tyres had roughly 14–15 more laps on them than those of Antonelli, Verstappen and Norris, yet the Ferrari was generally losing only a few tenths per lap.
That is significant. It suggests that Ferrari’s tyre degradation was actually very good in Madrid and reinforces something that had already become visible during qualifying: the SF-26 appears to have difficulty putting energy into the tyres quickly, requiring two preparation laps before a push lap, but that weakness over a single lap may have a positive counterpart over a long race stint.
In other words, Ferrari’s slow tyre warm-up may be hurting qualifying while helping tyre longevity in the race.
Of course, this should not be confused with Ferrari having solved all of its rear-tyre problems. The SF-26 still appears sensitive to rear mechanical grip and wheelspin, especially in slow corners. But Madrid showed that once the tyre is inside its operating window, Ferrari can apparently keep it there for a very long time.
The VSC was the strategic turning point
This is where Ferrari’s decision becomes much more questionable.
Leclerc had gained track position by extending his first stint, but his P1 was not a true strategic P1: he was leading with an unpaid pit stop, because he still had to stop and use a second compound.
The VSC therefore offered Ferrari something extremely valuable: an opportunity to pay that mandatory pit-stop cost at a substantial discount.
Antonelli and Verstappen took advantage of it.
Norris was extremely unlucky. The timing of the VSC caught him after he had passed the opportunity to benefit from it, and his subsequent stop was made even more costly by an approximately five-second delay caused by a wheel-gun problem. His final P3, only 5.089s behind Antonelli, therefore does not really reflect the race he had driven.
Ferrari, however, deliberately kept Leclerc out.
Effectively, they rejected a cheap pit stop that already existed and gambled on another SC/VSC appearing later, at a more convenient moment.
It never came.
There was admittedly a genuine difficulty behind Ferrari’s decision. Because Leclerc had started on Hard, stopping during the earlier VSC would have required a very long second stint on Medium – potentially more than 40 laps depending on the precise stopping point. Given the pre-race expectations of high degradation and the very high track temperatures, committing to M until the finish would certainly have carried some risk.
But Ferrari did not necessarily need to commit to H–M to the finish.
They could have taken the cheap VSC stop, fitted the Medium and then reassessed the race. If the Medium could reach the finish, excellent. If degradation became excessive, Leclerc still had his brand-new Soft available for a short final stint.
That would have created an H–M–S possibility in which Ferrari controlled its own strategy.
Instead, they chose to remain on H and wait for an external event to rescue the strategy.
That is the fundamental problem: Ferrari exchanged a certain strategic discount for the possibility of a larger discount later.
Russell provides a very interesting comparison
George Russell’s race makes Ferrari’s decision even more interesting.
Russell completed:
H29 – M14 – H14
and still finished only 0.713s behind Leclerc.
Leclerc completed:
H48 – S9
and finished:
+29.116s behind Antonelli
+24.765s behind Verstappen
+24.027s behind Norris
and only 0.713s ahead of Russell.
This does not mean Russell’s strategy would automatically have been optimal for Ferrari. But it demonstrates how little strategic value Ferrari ultimately extracted from keeping Leclerc on the Hard for such an extraordinary length of time.
Charles protected those tyres beautifully, retained track position and demonstrated remarkable degradation control – yet after the mandatory stop he ended up almost exactly one normal pit-stop behind the podium fight.
That is perhaps the most revealing statistic of the race.
Ferrari waited too long to use its new Soft
When Ferrari finally stopped Leclerc and fitted the fresh Soft, the tyre worked immediately:
By waiting until the end of Lap 49, Ferrari had created a deficit that even a fresh Soft could no longer recover.
And this also tells us something about the Soft that Ferrari had deliberately preserved through qualifying. Saving that new set made strategic sense – but a strategic weapon has value only if there is enough race left in which to use it.
Ferrari preserved the weapon and then deployed it when the battle was effectively already over.
Hamilton’s retirement deprived us of an important comparison
This also makes Lewis Hamilton’s race particularly unfortunate from a technical and strategic point of view.
Hamilton started on the Soft, potentially setting up what, in hindsight, looks like a very interesting S–H strategy.
The Soft could provide the grip and track-position opportunity at the beginning of the race, while Leclerc subsequently demonstrated that the SF-26 was capable of running an extraordinarily long and competitive stint on the Hard.
Unfortunately, Hamilton’s race ended before we could see that strategy develop.
He reported that he could barely stop the car and, after the decision to retire, asked his engineer:
“What, what failed?”
The reply was simply:
“Something in the brake system.”
The precise cause has not yet been confirmed by Ferrari, but there are at least two possible scenarios worth considering.
Sky Sports F1 raised the possibility that the contact between Hamilton and Verstappen at the first chicane after the start may have damaged a component associated with the rear braking/brake-by-wire system, with the consequences only becoming apparent several laps later.
There is also another possible source of consequential damage: Hamilton subsequently made contact with the wall on the left-hand side of the car, shortly before the tunnel section. Such an impact could conceivably have damaged a brake-system component, line, sensor, wiring or associated hardware, with the failure developing progressively rather than instantaneously.
At this stage, however, both scenarios remain hypotheses.
A completely independent component failure cannot be excluded either. Ferrari’s inspection of the car will be required to determine whether the braking-system failure resulted from one of those incidents or was simply an unrelated reliability problem.
That distinction is important, because the car had completed the normal pre-race running and brake checks without an obvious fatal problem. A failure appearing only after the start therefore makes consequential damage an interesting possibility, but certainly not yet a proven explanation.
Strategically, Hamilton’s retirement deprived us of perhaps the most interesting Ferrari comparison of the entire race:
HAM: potentially S–H
versus LEC: H–S
After seeing Leclerc keep the Hard competitive for almost 50 laps, Hamilton’s S–H strategy suddenly looks much more interesting than it did before the race.
The broader Ferrari lesson from Madrid
For me, Madrid produced two important conclusions about Ferrari.
The first is technical.
The SF-26 appears to have much better long-run tyre behaviour than its qualifying warm-up difficulties might suggest. Leclerc remaining competitive on a Hard tyre after more than 40 laps is perhaps the strongest evidence we have seen so far.
There may therefore be an interesting paradox in this car:
slow energy input into the tyre = qualifying weakness, but potentially a race-stint advantage.
This deserves to be watched again at the next races.
The second conclusion is strategic.
Ferrari once again appears to have confused track position with strategic position.
Leclerc was P1 on the timing screen, but he was not truly leading the race strategically because everyone around him had already paid a cost that he still owed.
When the VSC offered Ferrari the opportunity to pay that cost cheaply, they declined it.
Instead of taking the neutralisation that actually existed, Ferrari effectively gambled on receiving another one later.
And that is particularly difficult to understand on a new street circuit where SC/VSC interruptions had already been identified before the race as an important strategic variable.
The final result tells the story:
ANT P1
VER +4.351
NOR +5.089
LEC +29.116
RUS +29.829
Leclerc did not finish 29 seconds behind because the Ferrari was 29 seconds slower.
His extraordinary Hard stint actually suggests almost the opposite.
A substantial part of that final deficit was the price Ferrari ultimately paid for maintaining a temporary track position while postponing an unavoidable strategic cost.
The lesson seems remarkably simple:
When a VSC gives you a cheap pit stop that solves an obligation you must fulfil anyway, take the cheap pit stop that exists rather than gamble on the perfect cheap pit stop that may never come.
Ferrari’s alternative strategy itself was not necessarily wrong.
The mistake was failing to recognise when that strategy had already done its job – and when it was time to cash in the advantage.
The problem with Ferrari is that they statted with a very good car stuck with a mediocre engine. Now the others have caught up on the car department whereas Ferrari hasn’t made big enough improvements on the PU side to nullify the gap they had there.
I don't think it matters if Hamilton or Leclerc managed to reach those in front. The Madrid GP was such a joke that passing is impossible unless you have a car 2 seconds faster.
The problem with Ferrari is that they statted with a very good car stuck with a mediocre engine. Now the others have caught up on the car department whereas Ferrari hasn’t made big enough improvements on the PU side to nullify the gap they had there.
Its another dead season for them unfortunately.
McLaren has a better chassis/aero now. RB is not that far behind as well.
