Alex Brundle has outlined the philosophy that could cost Ferrari the Formula 1 title in 2026 despite Lewis Hamilton‘s “winning mentality” comments.
There is renewed optimism within the Tifosi regarding the Maranello-based team’s prospects in F1’s latest era.
The SF-26 debuted on track, at Fiorano, before hitting the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for the collective private shakedown in January.
Both, Hamilton and team-mate Charles Leclerc logged substantial data for the iconic Italian marque, with the seven-time World Champion even setting the fastest overall lap of the event.
First impressions, hence, suggested that Ferrari would be running towards the sharp end of the field. This theory, however, was buoyed by Hamilton himself when he lauded the team for its unparalleled “winning mentality”.
“Everyone’s really on it,” he had said after the shakedown in Barcelona. “I really feel the winning mentality, like in every single person in the team, more than ever. So it’s a positive. Everyone’s positive and incredibly enthusiastic.”
But if history is anything to go by, Ferrari‘s pre-season prowess has, more often than not, fizzled under competitive pressure.
Brundle believes this is more to do with an underlying philosophy of motorsport propaganda rather than an inherent inability to live up to expectations.
“I do think that that is a problem that Ferrari have,” he explained. The Briton asserted that the Tifosi “would never allow” Ferrari to do anything else than big themselves up.
“When you look into the history of Ferrari and how that brand came to be, that win or nothing, we go racing, and we occasionally sell a car if we wake up in the morning and the V8 engine stock is depleted. ‘Yeah, somebody ring a prince and see if he wants a race car’,” added Brundle.
“That’s how Ferrari was made. One guy with an extreme, it’s unfair even to call it a passion, like obsession with racing.
“So to acknowledge that they don’t intend to win the Formula 1 World Championship, I don’t think would be in Ferrari vernacular.”
Lewis Hamilton’s perceived ‘disadvantage’ at Ferrari
Hamilton’s arrival at Ferrari was arguably the biggest driver transfer in the history of modern F1. It seemed as though history was waiting in the wings to be written.
Reality, however, hit hard for the duo. Hamilton finished the 2025 campaign without a Grand Prix podium to his for the first-time ever in his career.
But for Brundle, it isn’t a simple matter of the 41-year-old being past the peak of his powers.
Rather, last season was a disappointing concoction of a philosophy and ground realities that unravelled the hype Hamilton brought with himself to Ferrari.
“Well, there are a couple of things,” he began. “There’s an overarching phrase in motorsport, which I believe is Ron Dennis’ originally, which is ‘past performance has no monopoly on future results’.
“So every race you do, you start from scratch, physics, F1 and the world of motorsport owes no one anything. Not to sniff at what anybody, the achievements of any driver in the past, which obviously are written into the history books and are chart-topping in Lewis’s case.
“This particular set of regulations, and also the Ferrari are not hugely to Lewis’s strength. He likes to pick a car up by the scruff of the neck. He likes the rear moving around underneath him. And the particular way the latest before this one twist of regulations happened was, was not to Lewis’s natural inclination and driving style.
“And then above and beyond that, I think there’s a certain inertia in the way that Ferrari do things – their processes, their mentality of setting up a car.
“Which even though there was tremendous respect for Lewis – was that the biggest transfer of a racing driver between two teams of all time, it’s definitely up there – tremendous respect for this coming into Ferrari, this he would still have had to overcome, while being incredibly institutionalised by immense success at Mercedes and the time period at Mercedes, he would have had to overcome a little bit of that inertia.
“All of those little bits together, I think, have amounted to a disadvantage. And any disadvantage then spirals slightly when everybody expects huge results, maybe starts to panic a little bit, even though they’d never admit it, not necessarily even in Lewis’s case, but in the team’s case, that those results aren’t coming.
“Then we all over try slightly, because that’s human nature. And so it goes on.”
2026 F1 reset provides ‘tremendous’ Hamilton-Ferrari opportunity
2026 might be a make or break year for the seven-time World Champion. If Ferrari aren’t able to deliver a winning package, they could be set on losing both, Hamilton and Leclerc.
Brundle, however, believes that with the ground effects era in the rear-view mirror, as far as Hamilton is concerned, the 2026 regulations could serve up a prospect to the Briton to “resurrect” Ferrari’s long-lost prowess.
“He’s got a tremendous opportunity now, if this Ferrari engine is good to resurrect that Ferrari, and he is a technical mind in terms of development of a race car and a library in terms of his feel for what a race car needs,” Brundle asserted
“So he’s got as good a chance as anybody, I think, in this new reg set.”
READ MORE – Lewis Hamilton labels 2026 F1 cars ‘more enjoyable’ after Ferrari shakedown
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