The first of the others
Mercedes in the debut race of the new regulations and the 2026 world championship, was without a shadow of a doubt the best car on track. Only Ferrari, in the early stages of the race, managed to worry the Silver Arrows, thanks to an excellent start that allowed Charles Leclerc to lead the pack ahead of George Russell – the eventual race winner.
The third place of the Monegasque driver and the fourth of a rediscovered Lewis Hamilton are a good start for Ferrari, in the knowledge that there will be a race for updates with a huge margin for improvement.
FormulaPassion.it asked Luigi Mazzola (present on Instagram at this address) – for 21 years at Maranello in various roles, including technical manager of the test area in the Schumacher era – for an opinion on the chances of the Reds closing the gap to Mercedes during the season.
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An SF-26 that leaves room for optimism
Engineer Mazzola, from the Australian data – and as also confirmed by Norris post-race – at the chassis level, the Ferrari SF-26 seems to have been born well.
Is closing the gap to Mercedes on the engine and energy management front a possible feat for the world championship dream?
“I agree, Ferrari was born well. And besides being born well it was above all ready, it made very good use of the tests and was able to verify all its components and procedures. Proof of this is that both drivers are performing: this shows that the car is valid as a general compromise and therefore in terms of balance, aerodynamic load, braking, traction. From this point, Ferrari, in this Grand Prix, proved to be the absolute second force. The others were out of this world, only six finished on the lead lap. Let’s leave aside Verstappen, who started very far back, but Norris showed all the limits compared to the top two teams.”
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So is there room for some optimism for Ferrari fans, or does this Mercedes not allow for dreams of glory?
“Certainly there is room to be optimistic, because the cars are immature, they don’t come from years of development. I think there will be a lot of development on these cars and therefore the optimism is all there. You cannot think that after the first Grand Prix, with a totally new regulation, you can immediately name who will be world champion and the winning team, it’s absurd.
Normally in more traditional situations, until last year, at least three or four Grands Prix were needed to understand what the performance ranking was. Here even more races will be needed, because different types of circuits are required. Depending on the type of track, the cars will have more or less difficulty having electric power available for as long as possible and therefore knowing how to charge the batteries well.
The optimism is all there. Today it was seen that there is one team ahead of everyone and it is a fact. They did better, they did everything they had to do. Ferrari worked very well, but in Australia it was not up to Mercedes’ level. The others, on the other hand, were out of this world.”
