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There’s a small chance that the intra-team battle between Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari could decide the winner of the 2026 drivers’ championship.
Pre-season testing hasn’t started yet, but the 2026 regulation changes mean that the nine days of running each team gets before the Australian Grand Prix are going to be more important than ever.
Ferrari have enjoyed mixed results during the past rule changes in Formula 1, but never built the most dominant car.
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They watched Lewis Hamilton win six championships in seven years at Mercedes, before Max Verstappen won four titles on the bounce with Red Bull.
However, the 2022 F1 season saw Charles Leclerc end up as Verstappen’s closest challenger before his campaign fell away.
The Monegasque driver’s impressive start to the previous ruleset might be the key to him once again beating Hamilton in 2026, when the drivers have to learn a completely new way to drive their cars once again.
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Charles Leclerc’s F1 adaptability could give him another advantage over Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari
Journalist Edd Straw was speaking on the Nailing the Apex Podcast about the upcoming rule changes.
George Russell has been predicted to thrive in 2026, and the likes of Carlos Sainz, who are extremely vocal on the team radio, will also benefit from increased communication likely to be needed with the new aerodynamic and boost systems.
Straw explained: “There are also different ways of learning for drivers.
“I do agree that globally it’ll be better for younger drivers than older drivers, but there are different ways of learning things.
“And Alonso’s a pretty adaptable driver, and I wouldn’t say he won’t necessarily be able to adapt, but he’s always been very adaptable in the way he approaches things.
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“And there’s also kind of almost two different ways of learning it because some of the drivers pick stuff up really quickly and intuitively, and they almost don’t know how they’re doing it.
“For example, the change of braking style that was required for the ground effect cars, the previous rules in 2022. Verstappen was on that quickly. Leclerc was. I’m not sure Leclerc had particularly thought about it.
“It’s just he processed it so quickly. It’s like the difference between if you learn how to do something just automatically, and you don’t necessarily know the mechanism.
“It was an interesting case with Leclerc and Sainz at Ferrari. It took Sainz quite a while to get on top of that.
“Sainz is quite an intelligent and adaptable driver, but I don’t think he’s the one who intuitively gets it straight away.”
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What F1 drivers are now saying behind the scenes about the 2026 regulation changes
Leclerc has the benefit of being far more ingrained at Ferrari than Hamilton, meaning he’s already starting from a higher baseline going into 2026.
But if he can show the same level of adaptability at the start of this year as he did with the new braking technique needed for the ground effect era, then Hamilton might have his work cut out trying to beat his teammate.
Providing an insight into what the drivers are saying about the new rule changes, Straw continued: “I am interested to see if, dynamically, there was a very strong reason why there was kind of one driving style that you really need to get on top of with the previous generation of cars.
“A few drivers I’ve spoken to have said this is a little bit having to hammer you into that because you haven’t got that problem of this high speed to low speed balance window whereby the fundamental problem you have is if you have a strong enough a strong enough front end to work in the slower corners that often sort of pins the front end in the high speed and the rear is really unstable.
“And that’s something drivers like other drivers don’t. It looks like it might work with a few more different driving styles in terms of pace, but then there’s a question of does it work with your energy recovery? That’s the other dimension as well.”
Leclerc and Hamilton’s demands for the 2026 car have been listened to by Ferrari, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee any level of performance.
It’s all going to come down to how they compare to their rivals, and then whether Leclerc’s adaptability once again shines through against Hamilton.
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