Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) sensed right from the start: something wasn’t right

A bitter pill to swallow for Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari fans at the historic Spanish Grand Prix, held for the first time at Madrid’s Madring circuit: a brake failure, his first retirement of the 2026 Grand Prix season, and his first since Brazil 2025 (collision damage following contact with Carlos Sainz’s car). Hamilton’s last retirement due to a brake failure: Canada 2014!

A zero-points race for Ferrari superstar Lewis Hamilton and, at the same time, a victory for Kimi Antonelli – this has serious implications for the World Championship standings: Hamilton now trails the Italian by 101 points.

As it later transpired, the 41-year-old Briton had already sensed during the warm-up lap that something was amiss with his race car. He sent a radio message to the pit crew to this effect. But all attempts to get the problem under control by adjusting the settings on the steering wheel were doomed to failure.

In the Ferrari SF-26, Hamilton felt the brake pedal travel getting longer and longer. The driver with 106 Grand Prix wins to his name lost position after position and was eventually forced to retire.

This extends his run without a podium finish, as Hamilton has now not been on the podium since the British Grand Prix at Silverstone (third place) – in other words, since the start of July!

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Following his home race, Lewis finished fourth in Belgium, fifth in Hungary, fourth again in the Netherlands and sixth in Italy.

What is causing headaches for the Italian engineers is that the SF-26 has generally been reliable throughout this Grand Prix season. Ferrari has not yet commented on exactly what went wrong with Hamilton’s car. In Italy, there is speculation that the problem lies with the control system for the so-called ‘brake-by-wire’ – that is, the electronically controlled braking system (as opposed to the traditional, mechanically controlled braking system).