Second row for Hamilton
Ferrari confirms its fourth place in the second Qualifying of 2026, even though in this case it was a Sprint session. If in Australia it was Isack Hadjar who preceded Charles Leclerc behind the unbeatable Mercedes, today it was Lando Norris who beat Lewis Hamilton by a few thousandths. Leclerc, instead, finished sixth behind Oscar Piastri as well.
The Reds in Free Practice ran with the Macarena rear wing, but then in Sprint Qualifying this wing was not used. Hamilton had a spin during Free Practice and after that episode over the radio Leclerc received instructions to correct the use of this wing which still has a bit of delay in the closing phase compared to the front wing, a delay that creates some imbalance during braking.
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“We used free practice to carry out reliability tests and then we decided not to use it, we will make the final decision after accumulating some mileage”, said Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur to Sky Sport. “We will try to get a good start to be as close as possible to the Mercedes and from there we will see what we can do,” Vasseur added regarding the Sprint Qualifying verdict. Ferrari has taken a small step forward in terms of the gap with Mercedes, which went from eight to six tenths in the Australia-China comparison.
