As Motorsport.com Italia reports, the Brazilian Grand Prix brought a sudden halt to Ferrari's recent momentum, exposing lingering limitations within the SF-26 across a difficult weekend at Interlagos. While grid penalties certainly didn't make life easy for Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, they weren't enough on their own to account for a disappointing overall race result.
The core of the trouble stemmed from a severe inability to manage the tires properly, leading to wild and erratic swings in performance. Frédéric Vasseur pointed out that tire struggles dwarf car characteristics or updates, noting that missing the correct operating window can cost almost a full second of pace. Low ambient temperatures only exacerbated this thermal sensitivity, while a clear lack of top speed compounded the misery for both drivers as they fought to climb through the field on a track offering essentially only one dry racing line.
Leclerc was brutally honest about his opening stint, describing the car as feeling like it was driving directly on the rims with no rear grip and constant oversteer. Hamilton enjoyed a brilliant start that netted eleven positions early on, but his rear tires soon gave way, triggering a similar bout of terminal oversteer that halted his charge. Vasseur maintained that the weekend's setbacks don't erase the genuine development steps Ferrari has taken over the course of the season, though the Interlagos reality check laid bare how hard it is to maintain consistency in a fluctuating competitive order.
Attention now turns to defending second place in the Constructors' Championship with three rounds remaining, a target Hamilton insists is vital for the hard-working factory staff. Vasseur echoed the determination to finish the year strongly despite the bitter taste left by the Brazilian weekend. Yet the afternoon also featured another flashpoint when Hamilton opted to ignore a late call to the pits for slicks as rain intensified in the first sector. Believing the weather would hold while he chased down Liam Lawson at roughly a second per lap, the British driver stayed out.
That gamble backfired instantly when the first corner proved completely soaked, catching him out and costing him two positions alongside a heart-stopping moment narrowly avoiding the wall. Vasseur acknowledged a slight delay in radio communication while noting there was still time to react, marking the second time in four races that Hamilton has waved away the pit wall's instructions to his own detriment.
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