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Ferrari ace Lewis Hamilton gave his old Mercedes boss Toto Wolff a call after F1’s 2026 pre-season tests in Bahrain looking to hear the truth about the Silver Arrows’ new car.
Hamilton left Sakhir with the sense that the two three-day tests revealed “little” about what sort of performance level every team actually has going into the 2026 F1 season. So, the 41-year-old put a call into Wolff, as well as McLaren CEO Zak Brown, to try to understand more.
Mercedes were widely expected to start the 2026 F1 regulations era as the team to beat for a long time before a car had even hit a circuit. And the Brackley bunch remain the team that many in the paddock believe have the best all-round car, based on what they saw in testing.
But there have been suggestions from the likes of Ferrari pilot Charles Leclerc and former F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya that Mercedes hid the true performance of their 2026 car during testing. The Silver Arrows also had a few reliability issues through the second test in Bahrain.
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Lewis Hamilton called Toto Wolff trying to learn Mercedes’ actual performance level in 2026
McLaren expect a performance bump in Australia, as well, as the Woking natives will receive Mercedes’ homologated power unit after using an older spec engine for the tests in Bahrain. Only the Silver Arrows’ drivers used what is likely to be their final engine to test its reliability.
READ MORE: All you need to know about the 2026 F1 season, from the calendar to drivers
As lap times from testing also do not offer a clear picture of the pecking order, owing to the unknowns like fuel loads and engine settings, Hamilton called Wolff and Brown to try to see how the cars that Mercedes and McLaren have developed compare with the Ferrari’s SF-26.
“The tests revealed little,” Hamilton told Corriere della Sera. “Everyone was hiding behind their fuel loads. I called Toto Wolff at Mercedes and Zak Brown at McLaren to try to understand what they understood, but I didn’t get any results.
“However, I have one certainty. After what we went through last year, we can handle any situation. This team has everything it takes to win.
“We have to finish the job together with the fans. Easier said than done, but I came to Ferrari because I believed in it, and I still believe in it.”
Lewis Hamilton has risked making the same mistake by claiming Ferrari have ‘everything it takes to win’
If fans had chants for F1 drivers like football players, what would they be?
It was suggested during testing that Mercedes did not want to reveal the true extent of their performance in Bahrain, as the Silver Arrows’ rivals were still questioning the possibility that the Brackley crew found a loophole in the F1 engine compression ratio regulations for 2026.
Yet many in the paddock still believe that Mercedes will head to the Australian Grand Prix as the team to beat, with Ferrari anywhere from the second to fourth-best team. McLaren and Red Bull complete what is likely to be a very tight top four, at least at the start of the season.
Hamilton, however, has just risked making the same mistake he made after joining Ferrari in 2025 by stating that the Scuderia have “everything it takes” to win. The Briton declared that Ferrari had “every ingredient” to bid for a title after joining the Scuderia, but it was not true.
It was suggested last year that some at Ferrari resented Hamilton for pointing out their flaws throughout his first campaign in Maranello, having compared their operations with what he experienced at Mercedes. It remains to be seen whether Ferrari followed any of his advice.
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