The car launch season for the 2026 Formula 1 season is well underway, with Red Bull, Racing Bull, Haas, Audi and Mercedes all unveiling their liveries for this year.
Next up is Ferrari on Friday, with the Italian team slipping to fourth in the standings after a hugely disappointing 2025 season and failing to win a grand prix for the first time since 2021.
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But will 2026 bring renewed optimism due to widespread regulatory changes, but will that hope be dashed as quickly as 2022?
What’s new at Ferrari?
Not much has changed for Ferrari in F1 2026, considering it has retained its driver pairing of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, Fred Vasseur remains team principal and, spoiler alert, the car that will be revealed on Friday is red.
However, it was recently revealed that Ricciardo Adami will resign as Hamilton’s race engineer to oversee testing of previous cars as part of Ferrari’s young driver programme.
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Adami is a staunch Ferrari supporter and the 52-year-old joined from Toro Rosso in 2015 as race engineer to Sebastian Vettel and Hamilton’s predecessor Carlos Sainz. So when the seven-time world champion joined in 2025, it was a natural fit for the Italian to take on the role, but it was discovered early on that there were communication issues between the pair.
Riccardo Adami, Ferrari engineer
Riccardo Adami, Ferrari engineer
Most notably in Monaco, Hamilton claimed radio communications were “not quite clear” after receiving a grid penalty for impeding Max Verstappen in Q1 because his team had mistakenly informed him that the Red Bull driver was slowing down.
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Then on Sunday, Hamilton gave his usual post-race message after finishing fifth, but was followed by radio silence, to which the Brit responded: “Are you upset with me or something?”.
There were also occasions when he expressed dissatisfaction with strategy, such as in Miami when he sarcastically said “take a tea break while you’re at it”, so Hamilton and Adami’s relationship had a fractious feel all year long, with some suggesting they lacked the necessary chemistry – although the team denied this.
It’s unknown who Adami’s successor will be, but it will have to be someone who can start with Hamilton as he can’t just keep churning between them in the hope that he can replicate his experience with Peter Bonnington at Mercedes.
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Especially because this is such an important year for Hamilton, who finished 2025 with a disappointing finish in sixth place, 86 points behind fifth-placed Leclerc, and failed to win a grand prix – the third time he has done so in four years.
If the 41-year-old’s woes persist then he could retire at the end of the season, especially as Hamilton’s contract expires by then and although it is understood there is a third-year option, this would need to be beneficial for all parties to continue.
What is the biggest challenge facing Ferrari?
Ferrari is a unique team in that it is the only team to have competed in every season of F1, and during this time it has become the most successful team with a total of 31 championships.
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Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
This can sometimes be its Achilles’ heel, as it brings with it a certain level of expectation every year, and it doesn’t help that Ferrari are constantly being backed by a demanding Italian media – much like the British media’s coverage of Manchester United.
This was especially true last year, when major Italian media speculated that Vasseur’s days at Ferrari were numbered, along with those of key personnel, following a lackluster start to 2025.
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Vasseur, who spoke in Montreal about the attack, criticized the journalists who covered the reports and then claimed that “we are facing this situation every day in Italy now and it is too much. If they want to be successful, we have to be able to work in a clean environment and we are not in this situation.”
So a big challenge for anyone at Ferrari is to try to block out the outside noise and focus on the matter at hand, in order to achieve the above expectations. That’s something Ferrari in particular needs to do this year as its 18-year title drought continues and Ferrari can’t afford a driver like Leclerc not winning the title, nor can it afford a blockbuster move from Hamilton.
What is Ferrari’s strongest asset?
Despite speculation last year that Vasseur would leave Ferrari amid its troubles in 2025, the Frenchman is still seen as the team’s strongest asset; frankly, if Vasseur can’t lead Ferrari to success, no one can.
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Because Vassell is really good, and that’s shown throughout his managerial career. It all started in GP2, when he won the title as ART boss alongside Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Nico Hulkenberg before eventually moving up to F1 with Renault.
Frederic Vasseur, Ferrari
Frederic Vasseur, Ferrari
Although that tenure lasted just one season, he fared much better during his five years at Sauber, with Vasseur helping develop rookie Leclerc, completing a deal with Alfa Romeo and guiding the relatively small Swiss outfit to sixth place in the 2022 championship.
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It would also help Vasseur move somewhat out of the Italian bubble that has plagued Ferrari for years, as the 57-year-old has shown a calmness and common sense that many of his predecessors lacked.
One example of this is his attitude towards the media, whether it was his response in Canada that de-escalated the situation a bit, or the way he constantly defended his drivers in the media – for example, Hamilton’s three consecutive outings in the first quarter.
He knows that Ferrari is not a quick fix and that a lot of things need to change to make the foundations stronger, and there is no better person for the job – which is quite possibly the toughest in F1 – as Vasseur is more than capable of dealing with any problem that comes to the Ferrari team boss.
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What are Ferrari’s goals for F1 2026?
Ferrari’s goal for 2026 is simple: to return to the top. That’s because many of the older generation grew up under Scuderia Ferrari’s championship reign from the 1960s to the early 2000s, but for younger fans it’s a completely different story.
Many of them haven’t even witnessed a Ferrari title, considering the last was the constructors’ title in 2008 and the last drivers’ title was won by Kimi Raikkonen the year before – but that’s not to say they haven’t had the chance to overcome this drought since.
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Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, first place
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, first place
First in 2012, Fernando Alonso squandered a 39-point lead over eventual champion Vettel, and six years later the German was left heartbroken for his Ferrari; Vettel briefly led Hamilton in the 2018 F1 title race, but then collapsed on the German lead, ceding all the power to his Mercedes rival.
Heartache seems to be a theme for all Ferrari drivers, with Leclerc winning two of the first three grands prix in 2022, the opening year of ground-effect racing, to build a 34-point lead. But then mistakes by Monaco and the team allowed Verstappen to easily win his second championship.
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Such constant failure has given Ferrari a narrative that often suffocates in high-pressure moments, so the goal must be to rewrite the script and return Maranello to its glory days.
The new rules are an opportunity to achieve that, but as Leclerc said last year in his best Elvis voice: “It’s now or never” to become champion.
Also read:
Leclerc says Ferrari’s F1 opportunity is “not to be missed” as the 2026 changes approach
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